第二章标题是我们都赤裸裸的在大太阳下。
在信息世界不到处留有个人信息就像走路不沾地面一样不可能,何况我们还经常基于种种种种的原因自愿的提供这些信息,比如成天分享自己的心得的博主,和每一个他人信息窥探狂和个人信息暴露狂。你申请的时候会以为招生官不会看你那愚蠢的myspace页面或者facebook页面,确实他们“通常”不会看,除非有时候他们想看了。
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Acxiom is the country’s biggest customer data company. Its business is to aggregate transaction data from all those swipes of cards in card readers all over the world—in 2004, this amounted to more than a billion transactions a day. The company uses its massive data about financial activity to support the credit card industry, banks, insurers, and other consumers of information about how people spend money. Unsurprisingly, after the War on Terror began, the Pentagon also got interested in Acxiom’s data and the ways they gather and analyze it. Tracking how money gets to terrorists might help find the terrorists and prevent some of their attacks.
ChoicePoint is the other major U.S. data aggregator. ChoicePoint has more than 100,000 clients, which call on it for help in screening employment can- didates, for example, or determining whether individuals are good insurance risks.
安客诚(有多庞大请自行搜索)是全美最大的消费者数据公司。它的生意是集合从全世界所有刷卡时读卡器收集到的交易信息。在2004年,交易次数超过每天十亿。这家公司使用大量的关于金融活动的数据来支撑信用卡行业,银行,保险和其他想知道人们怎么花钱的信息消费者。所以当反恐战争开始以后,五角大楼开始对安客诚的数据和它们采集分析数据的手段感兴趣,一点都不令人吃惊。追踪钱是怎么到了恐怖分子手里可能会帮助找到这些恐怖分子并且预防一些袭击
choicepoint 是另一家主要的数据聚集公司。它有超过10万个客户,这些客户需要它来做一些例如筛选应聘者,或者判断一个人是不是有保险风险这类的工作。
Acxiom and ChoicePoint are different from older data analysis operations, simply because of the scale of their operations. Quantitative differences havequalitative effects, as we said in Chapter 1; what has changed is not the tech- nology, but rather the existence of rich data sources. Thirty years ago, credit cards had no magnetic stripes. Charging a purchase was a mechanical oper- ation; the raised numerals on the card made an impression through carbon paper so you could have a receipt, while the top copy went to the company that issued the card. Today, if you charge something using your CapitalOne card, the bits go instantly not only to CapitalOne, but to Acxiom or other aggregators. The ability to search through huge commercial data sources— including not just credit card transaction data, but phone call records, travel tickets, and banking transactions, for example—is another illustration that more of the same can create something new.
安客诚和choicepoint不同于过去的数据分析运作,因为它们的运作规模完全不同。数量上的区别能带来质量上的效应。如我们在第一章所说,真正改变的不是科技,而是丰富数据资源的存在。三十年前,信用卡还没有磁条。收费主要是一项机械操作,你的卡上上升的金额会印在复写纸上以便你可以有一张收据,而上面的一联会进入发行你的卡片的公司。今天,如果你使用你的capitalone卡(capitalone请自行百科),信息不只会瞬间传到capitalone,还会传给安客诚和其他的联合者。这种能够在海量商业数据源搜索的能力——不只是信用卡交易数据,还包括电话记录,旅行机票和银行交易——再一次说明了:同样的事物的数量变化会带来新事物的诞生。
Email is as public as postcards, unless it is encrypted, which it usually is not. Employers typically reserve the right to read what is sent through com- pany email. Check the policy of your own employer; it may be hard to find, and it may not say what you expect. Here is Harvard’s policy, for example:
Employees must have no expectation or right of privacy in anything they create, store, send, or receive on Harvard’s computers, networks, or telecommunications systems. .... Electronic files, e-mail, data files, images, software, and voice mail may be accessed at any time by management or by other authorized personnel for any business pur- pose. Access may be requested and arranged through the system(s) user, however, this is not required
除非加密,邮件和明信片一样公开透明,而邮件通常都不会加密。雇主通常有权利读取通过企业邮箱传送的信件 。可以查一下你自己的雇主的政策,可能会很难找,而且可能结果跟你的期望不同。比如哈佛的政策是:员工对于隐私不能有任何期待或者权利,任何你在哈佛的计算机网络或通信系统上制造,存储,发送或者收到的电子文档,邮件,数据文件,图片,软件,和语音信息都可能会在任何时间被管理层或者其他授权人员获取,用以任何商业目的。信息的获取可能会通过向用户要求和安排得到,但这不一定。