California privacy; people vs computer traders

State-by-state online privacy? I'm not optimistic - "Sharing, With a Safety Net" | @nytimes http://t.co/dGYQxqeG7d
— Kenneth D. Pimple (@Ethical_PICT) September 20, 2013

The other face of the Flash Crash - "Computer Flaws Get Wry Smile From Humans Displaced" | @nytimes http://t.co/MazrxO2XiU
— Kenneth D. Pimple (@Ethical_PICT) September 20, 2013

Book on ethical guidance for PICT on its way

Emerging Pervasive Information and Communication Technologies (PICT): Ethical Challenges, Opportunities and Safeguards 

Edited by Kenneth D. Pimple,  Ph.D.

To be published by Springer; expected publication date June 30, 2013.

Description

This book provides a wide and deep perspective on the ethical issues raised by pervasive information and communication technology (PICT) – small, powerful, and often inexpensive Internet-connected computing devices and systems. It describes complex and unfamiliar technologies and their implications, including the transformative potential of augmented reality, the power of location-linked information, and the uses of “big data,” and explains potential threats, including privacy invaded, security violated, and independence compromised, often through widespread and lucrative manipulation.

PICT is changing how we live, providing entertainment, useful tools, and life-saving systems. But the very smartphones that connect us to each other and to unlimited knowledge also provide a stream of data to systems that can be used for targeted advertising or police surveillance. Paradoxically, PICT expands our personal horizons while weaving a web that may ensnare whole communities.

Chapters describe particular cases of PICT gone wrong, but also highlight its general utility. Every chapter includes ethical analysis and guidance, both specific and general. Topics are as focused as the Stuxnet worm and as broad as the innumerable ways new technologies are transforming medical care.

Written for a broad audience and suitable for classes in emerging technologies, the book is an example of anticipatory ethics – “ethical analysis aimed at influencing the development of new technologies” (Deborah Johnson 2010).

The growth of PICT is outpacing the development of regulations and laws to protect individuals, organizations, and nations from unintended harm and malicious havoc. This book alerts users to some of the hazards of PICT; encourages designers, developers, and merchants of PICT to take seriously their ethical responsibilities – if only to “do no harm” – before their products go public; and introduces citizens and policy makers to challenges and opportunities that must not be ignored.

For more information

"Preventing the Next Flash Crash"

In this editorial (New York Times, May 6, 2011), Edward E. Kaufman Jr., a former U.S. Senator (D-Delaware) and current Senator and chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Carl M. Levin (D-Michigan) decry the lack of regulatory reform on high-speed automated trading. They recall the 2010 flash crash:

One year ago, the stock market took a brief and terrifying nose-dive. Almost a trillion dollars in wealth momentarily vanished. Shares in blue-chip companies were traded at absurdly low prices. High-frequency traders, who use computers to look for microscopic price differences in stocks on different exchanges and other trading venues, stopped trading, while others immediately sold whatever they bought, mainly to each other, in what has been called “hot potato” trading.

Their tale of inaction and obstacles to action is depressing, and all too familiar. Here's an example of a practice with a demonstrated capacity to do tremendous harm to the world economy, balanced only by dubious claims of benefits and the religion of profit. The federal government clearly has the power and authority to remove the enormous risk but can't - or won't - take action.

It doesn't bode well for our cultural ability to deal with far less dramatic and harmful, but still serious, ethical issues raised by other pervasive and autonomous information technologies whose risk has not yet been demonstrated (shall we always wait for disaster, or could we once in a  while prevent it?) and for which no single entity with the capacity to control them can be found.

For more on the flash crash, see my earlier post.

Ken Pimple, PAIT Project Director

Surveillance for preschoolers; when algos takes over

Two tidbits today.

(1) An editorial in today's New York Times, Keeping Track of the Kids, expresses a "worry that we are all becoming a little too blasé about our scrutinized lives" in which we accept security cameras, mobile telephones that allow us to be tracked minute-by-minute, and RFID chips on preschool children. The editorial's final sentence: "Though it may seem innocuous to attach a chip to our preschoolers’ clothes, do we really want to raise a generation of kids that are accustomed to being tracked, like cattle or warehouse inventory?"

It's a nicely phrased question. There are, of course, other ways to put it, like, "do we really want to raise a generation of kids who are accustomed to being protected from predation, not to mention simply being lost?"

What, indeed, would be lost - or gained - by this generation's getting accustomed to being tracked? Their elders apparently became so accustomed with very little fanfare.

(2) Colin Allen, to whom my thanks, brought this ABC program, The flash crash (August 29), to my attention. The program is summarized as follows:

A few months ago the US share market plunged l000 points in a few minutes, and trillions were traded both up and down. What caused it, and can it happen again? Tiny high frequency computer algorithms - or algos - roam the markets, buying and selling in a parallel universe more or less uncontrolled by anyone. Did they go feral, or was it the fat finger of a coked out trader? In September US regulators bring out their findings.

One has to be more interested in stock markets than I am to listen to the entire program, or read the entire transcript, but you can find the good stuff easily enough at the very end - about the last 2 minutes in the audio. That's when Colin Allen himself sums up the underlying problems. Enjoy.

Ken Pimple, PAIT Project Director