As we all know, university application is a significant process for high school students. Relevant pictures show that the search volume for each university website is directly proportional to its ranking (US News). When every student enters any university’s website, the privacy cookies at the bottom of the page easily appeal to us. Take UCLA as an example. When we click the link to the website, we see the privacy tips down the page first. It says: “We use cookies tounderstand how you use our site and improve your experience, including personalizing content and storing your preferences. If you would prefer, you may set your browser to refuse cookies or alert you when cookies are being sent; however, it is possible that some parts of our sites will not function properly if you do so.”
Wecan easily find out the purpose of the website’s use of our information --- learning about our preferences. Then, we skip to the last sentence. It says we need to continue by accepting cookies. As a student who wants to focus on applying, it’s reasonable to click “accept all cookies” instead of revising the “Privacy Policy.” Nevertheless, that’s the origin of the “leak” of data and our privacy.
Digital Privacy
Generally, privacy on the Internet can bedivided into three parts ---- Information privacy, communication privacy, and individual privacy.
Information privacy stands for the privacy of our medical, financial, and other records, also known as data privacy. Usually, the government or companies can extract data from websites' databases. As technology improves, AI-driven data mining is applied to society, which means the AI can recognize and extract valuable records of our records by themselves.
The second privacy is communication privacy. This often happens when you call someone or text them on mobile phones. It could be disrespectful because the government or companies can detect the conversation between you and others. However, it sometimes works in discovering spies by detecting their discussions with foreigners. For example, a former CIA officer, Edward Snowden, revealed the truth about the United States and its allied nations’ monitoring of the communications between countries worldwide. I will discuss the significant event later in the passage.
Finally, it’s individual privacy. The range ofit is more comprehensive compared with the other two privacies. For instance, your favorite girl can be your privacy. I argue that it’s the hardest among three privacies that AI can detect since they’re not usually asked about online.
Convenience Brought by Data Mining
Generally, convenience can be separated into two parts. The first convenience is a comprehensive cognition of customers’ experience with products and services for companies. For example, I mentioned UCLA's privacy policies in the previous paragraph. The guidelines aim to keep track of every visit to their website. By now, we need to introduce a new concept --- database. We can consider it a fridge containing all kinds of food and drinks, regarded as thousands and millions of data. The food and beverage classification in the refrigerator is variable, representing the collected data type. The UCLA website comprises different modules, such as admission, school news, etc.
The database behind the website can calculate the number of visits to each module. If the visits to the admission office are the most frequent, the university can improve the admission exhibition. The university may make the web page screen look more attractive by exhibiting beautiful school pictures.
On the other hand, the website also keepstrack of visitors' IP addresses to discover the main groups worldwide that are interested in the UCLA application. After recognizing the leading group, the school can officially set up a link or module that helps the students in that region apply for the university. Suppose you visit the admissions section of UCLA. In that case, it especially tells the difference in requirements between Indian students in India and Indian students studying in the US, and it’s all contributed by data mining with privacy policy and cookies.
In a word, for public not-for-profit authorities, like hospitals,charities, and schools, traditional data mining can meet every website visitor’s needs, and high-quality services can be supplied to improve people’s quality of life. Then, with the application of AI, it can use advanced algorithms to select and read valuable data to improve efficiency.
The Wealth Channel of Businesses
The economic status is worsening because of global inflation, regional conflicts, and pandemic blocks during COVID-19—lots of companies shut down worldwide without the support of finance. However, as we turn to those top global companies, such as Google, NVIDIA, Apple, etc., they can stay competitive in the market no matter what happens in the worldwide economy. This is partly because of the advanced data mining system.
The ability to acquire information plays a vital role in the marketcompetition, and data mining can accelerate the information acquisition process. For example, McDonald's intelligent database can detect and record your communication privacy with McDonald’s database. If any consumers complain about their food or other services, McDonald’s will first compensate them to incentivize them to return to their restaurant, which can be recognized as meeting customers’ economic needs. On the other hand, they will reform the whole product line to improve the quality of goods. Perhaps they can fire some useless staff to reduce their average cost.
Nevertheless, the operation above isn’t sufficient for a listed company to maintain its competitiveness in the long term during the economic crisis. In my opinion, each dominant company owns many datasets that contain financial predictions, stock trends, and consumer demand alternation. To obtain a comprehensive market view, they will share their data to discover the laws of demand and supply. Then, they can try to contact some financiers and ask them to change the interest rate to incentivize people to become consumers instead of saving their money. After that, they will see where and when consumers significantly demand their products. However, the dominant companies probably have a distinct profit cycle in a year. To benefit each company in an oligopoly, others will invest in one company in a profit cycle. When the season changes to another company’s profit cycle, it can be invested to be more competitive. Finally, everyone finds out that they have earned a lot. Using data mining, the dominant companies share some data with other competitors to discuss which method can reduce costs and make profits. This can be regarded as a wealth channel for many firms.
Hidden Humanitarian Crisis
On 11thSeptember 2001, Muslim terrorists (al-Qaida) attacked the World Trade Center in New York by hijacking. In the short moments, thousands of lives pass away. After that, to destroy terrorism all over the world, it was said that the United States had set up at least 725 military bases and other installations around the globe.
The PrismProgram (PRISM) is a top-secret electronic surveillance program implemented by the National Security Agency (NSA) since the Bush administration in 2007, officially known as US-984XN. The plan intended to directly access the central servers of American internet companies to mine data and gather intelligence. The relevant map shows that 3/5 proportion of the land in the world can be
detected by the US National Security Agency.
The main 10 types of information monitored by the Prism program of the US National Security Agency are emails, instant messages, videos, photos, stored data, voice chats, file transfers, video conferences, login times, and details of social network data, all of which are monitored by the government. Through the Prism project, the National Security Agency can even monitor a person's online search content.
On June 6th,2013, Edward Snowden, the former CIA officer, revealed some parts of PRISM to the Guardian and the Washington Post. People startedto learn about the mysterious program after Snowden’s leakage, but the terrorists also recognized the risk of their communication with each other.
The plan was initially aimed at combatting terrorism. However, Snowden revealed some data mining methods used by the National Security Agency hence the terrorists can alter their communication routes to prevent detections, which improves the growth of terrorism in the world. They are hard to detect, so their plan may be secretly carried on anywhere. Any form of terroristic attacks will seriously
threaten the global citizens’ safety.
Nevertheless, was it truly an evil action of leaking PRISM?
In the report of Snowden, several dominant companies in the US, including Google, Apple, and Amazon, participated in the data mining of global customers and sent them directly to the National Security Agency. Every single netizen’s research, purchasing, and texting privacy were recorded and leaked to the US government, which destroyed our safety. Imagine that you are a simple netizen outside the United States who prefers shopping at Amazon, but Amazon mined your address, and phone number and sent them to the government.
As a result, we can find that Snowden’s leakage efficiently shows us the convenience for others to learn everything about us. If the government wants, it can check your relevant privacy anytime, which greatly damages our human dignity and human safety.
Reflection and Possible Improvements
With the improvement of technology and science,AI started to be widely used in many properties of our lives, including self-driving, Chat-GPT, intelligent shop, and data mining. Combining AI’s large computing power and self-learning, AI-driven data mining can accelerate the process of data mining authorities or organizations. Also, different companies can share some of their data in their database with each other to be more dominant in the market. The government may take similar action together with their allies to offend other regions and countries. For instance, NATO led by the United States, detects information worldwide except for North Korea. As soon as people log in to websites such as Google or Facebook, all their information privacy, including their addresses and ages, can be recorded in the database.
It is undeniable that AI-driven data mining can provide us with better services and products, but that doesn’t mean companies and the government can take our privacy optionally. A better solution for us is to turn on the protective mode in our browser, which will help you stop the track from websites you visit. On the other hand, websites should shorten their cookies and privacy policies so that users can catch up with the main content in the policy, realizing what kind of data will be mined and recorded.
Of course, the government can do regular checks on each company’s databases to find if they mine consumers’ data illegally, then the companies will be punished differently due to their degrees of illegal data mining.
At last, as a simple citizen on Earth, we cannot intervene in the political and military conflicts among distinct regions easily, so data mining may not be completely prevented in this case. However, I hope we can at least raise our awareness of data mining in our daily lives, making sure we can live freely and comfortably as a human.
Reference citation
- Data mining and the search for security: Challengesfor connecting the dots and databases.
Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress,Washington, DC 20540-7450, USA
- The market's response toward privacy and mass surveillance:The Snowden aftermath
Department of Informatics, University of Piraeus, 80 Karaoli &Dimitriou str, 18534 Piraeus, Greece
Department of Business Administration, University of Piraeus, 80 Karaoli& Dimitriou str, 18534 Piraeus, Greece
- Data mining method for listed companies’financial distress prediction
School of Business Administration, ZhejiangNormal University, Jinhua 321004, Zhejiang Province, PR China
- A quarter of pig farmers readily viewedinformation on Toxoplasma gondii infectionin pigs provided in a data exchange system of a Dutch slaughter company.
Wageningen Economic Research, P.O. Box 2970, 2502 LS, Den Haag, the Netherlands
VION Food Group, Boseind 15, 5281 RM, Boxtel, the Netherlands
Wageningen Bioveterinary Research, P.O. Box 65, 8200 AB, Lelystad, the Netherlands