Transcripts For CSPAN The Communicators 20141213

Communicators a look at personal Data Collection online and some of the ethics involved in that collection. Joining us is Indiana University professor mary gray, who was also a Senior Researcher with Microsoft Research. Professor gray, are we being studied and researched when we go online . Yes. Simple answer, yes. In the sense that any company that is trying to figure out how to best serve their users, how to show them the best website, how to show them the best information from their friends, is constantly trying to assess what makes the best Information Service for you. At the same time, universities for the last 20 years, as weve moved more and more social has been moving to think of this as a social environment. This is the public square. There are plenty of universities and researchers like myself who have come up with, you know, over the years, come up with Research Projects that have to do with studying peoples experiences online. And in both those cases, there is as much interest in figuring out what it is that people do as there is in people figuring out how to navigate those spaces. So theres both wanting to know what people do and people wanting to figure out how best do i find information . There are two different threads f research that go on. How sophisticated is it . What part . The research part. We have basic tools for studying social interaction. There are fields of sociology, anthropology, to Public Health that have ways of studying how do people find each other, how do they find information, how do they share information . All of those fields have had to grapple with what do we do when a lot of that social activity is no longer happening in a neighborhood, in a park, in a nonprofit lobby or some social space . So the tools we have are still theyre still in development. We dont have easy ways to figure out how to study that social interaction and do it in ways that make it clear that were there, make it clear that the information were gathering is for research, so were still learning how to do that. I think on the company side, companies have different investments for what kind of research, what kind of learning theyre trying to do in looking at peoples social interactions and they have a whole other set of challenges in doing that and doing it well and doing it respectfully. What are some of those challenges . I think the biggest challenge is that we are always moving between thinking of the information thats generated online as strictly a log, you know, a flat file of information like a search query or like a post and we treat that like its just text. At the same time what we are all grappling with is that it is not just a set of words. Its actually a conversation. So its how to figure out how to study the information thats online as both information and communication. That goes the significant challenge. People have different expectations of what we do with say a letter, or a phone call or an inperson conversation. All three of those things are actively happening online in terms of peoples point of view of what theyre trying to achieve, whether theyre sending an email or theyre texting, i. M. Ing with somebody, instant messaging with someone, or having a skype conversation. All three of those are ways that were generating information but theyre also these moments of social interaction. Is there a creepiness factor to all of this . The creepy question. Its a great question. As nk for all of us someone who uses a computer every day we have certain expectations when we fire up our computers about who sees what were doing, who we are sharing information with, and at any moment if the expectations i have are shifted because i realize there might be another party who sees what im doing, say for example if a message pops up and asks if i would like some help making a purchase, there are certain lines that we dont know weve crossed until its too late. Thats true for researchers. Thats true for companies. There isnt a clear sense of whats creepy because thats so culturally specific. One person talking loudly on their cell phone in a park has no problem with somebody standing next to them on a bench and listening to that conversation. At the same time, you can have someone who is trying to have a private conversation and they will go to Great Lengths to be somewhere thats completely secluded. So were not just dealing with the cultural context. Were dealing with individuals different preferences and experiences around privacy. And their needs for that privacy. Lets bring joe marks of politico into our conversation. Thank you, professor. So who is writing the rules of the road for whats appropriate online and is there a difference between the rules private rchers and for companies . With facebook, for example, most prominently they got into trouble recently by changing news feed results for certain people. Right. The rules of the road for researchers are relatively clear, and i want to be i want to emphasize that its relative. Right now we have u. S. Federal guidelines, often called the common rule, that set up the expectations for dealing with whats called Human Subjects Research. In all cases of a researcher like myself doing anything that involves people whether dealing with data theyve already produced like an archive, data base of a response to surveys, for example, the expectation is that at some point if i was participating in that study i was given some opportunities to say, yes, i would like my information used for this purpose. So we have really relatively clear guidelines for how to deal with the offline world. The challenges weve always been playing catch up with what to do with the online world. These rules were written and put in place in the early 1970s. So no one was thinking about, well, how do we deal with a skype call . That said, researchers at every university who do this kind of research are constantly working on what are the best practices . That includes the ethical practices. How do you inform someone about the data that we might be looking at . Ill give you a really good example, which is its really common to think about discussion forums Say Something thats like a google group, think of that as a public space because its publicly visible. I dont have to sign up for an account. And at the same time, if somebody is participating in a google group, say just an open group, they may feel fine with that being open with the assumption that maybe i am a fellow user of a particular group, say a tennis group. Im not necessarily in that moment when im posting something to that group thinking, oh, somebody who is studying tennis is also reading this group and collecting information. So in that moment, am i actually interacting with somebody as a researcher when i read that Discussion Group and i collect all the discussion posts that are there . Its a genuine question. We dont really know. And so we constantly have to be thinking what might be the to find tions to ask out what is necessary in that space. One easy question, somebody who runs that online group posts something that says dont come here unless you ar member of this group. That is a real signal to a researcher they should seek permission. Those kinds of clear messages are not always present. As researchers have been working on how do i work with these different online environments, these social environments, weve had to continually bootstrap ways of seeking consent, of doing followup if we need to debrief someone who might be part of a study, and especially when talking about a globally istributed set of interlock interlocutors coming together its even more complicated because it is not just the u. S. s rules. For companies i argue there is already a set of rules in place and that is the federal trade mmissions comblines on Good Business practices. We have a very clear set of guidelines for what are the expectations a consumer has when they use a product. What we could be talking about is let the rules right now that govern Human Subjects Research for researchers like me at universities really drive how we have this conversation about what to do online and look at companies involvement in doing testing, doing experimentation that has to do with product development, follow the guidelines in place for consumer rights. It seems the comblines in place for consumer rights, though, arent necessarily jimbing with consumer expectations. How do you square that circle . I think the biggest challenge is for both those companies to be explicit and transparent about what it is that theyre doing as they try and develop their products. In most cases any of the experimentation i know of thats happening in corporate settings is happening to improve a product. There are very few cases where someone is doing basic research in industry settings. My position at Microsoft Research is one of those exceptions. Were in a setting where we have access to resources internal to a company and that means i have to hold a higher bar for my research. In those cases if im researching a topic thats both really interregular all to general integral to general knowledge i think i have a clear mandate and for me that is the common rule or the rules that regulate Human Subjects Research. In the cases of companies that are doing any sort of experimentation, and the word experiment is a bit charged, doing anything that is studying user activity, i think they have to be both clear about their intention of who benefits from that activity if the consumer, individual consumer benefits from the activity by the improvement of their services, then i think theres room to be able to make sure those experiments are done with the greatest awareness and courtesy and respect to the consumer. I think there are plenty of cases where we also have the challenge to your point that most consumers do not realize how much information is gathered about them. That, to me, is the gap we have to bridge. Give some advice to a social Media Company that wanted to do an experiment like that to inform users appropriately, act appropriately in order to avoid the creepy factor. So often product development, the product in a lot of these cases is how you interact with your friends. Exactly. Which seems much more personal than buying a candy bar. That is a really great point. I think in many cases, in most of the cases, there would be an opportunity beyond terms of service. I dont think thats enough. There would be opportunities for companies to be able to say to a consumer before theyve ever run an experiment, wed really like to look at what youre doing for this reason. And be clear about the reason and give somebody the opportunity to say, i dont want to be part of that study. I think there are other cases where the question would not be answerable if someone is asked, would they like to participate. And usually in Human Subjects Research we call that in cases where theres a compromise that we need to have some amount of deception to be able to ask the research question. And deception in the sense of i need to be vague about why i am asking the questions about whether you like to play tennis, for example. In all of those cases it isnt as though a company doesnt know how to reach you. So if a Company Wants to do the kind of study that involves not seeking consent at the front end, there is no good reason they couldnt at the back end after an experiment has been run send a note out and say, hey. Just so you know, we were looking at your data to get a better sense of your experience of this particular part of our service or our goals of improving our service, and if youd like your data removed from this experiment, let us know. It would be very easy for them to remove that information. There are a lot of reasons given for why, what is called the debriefing process, why that wouldnt be possible. I dont buy it. I think there is plenty of opportunity here to do this in a way that respects consumers autonomy and their right to be able to say, i dont want to participate in something and be able to say i dont want to participate even if its for my own improvement of service. Can you talk a little about what the value is in this large, digital data set we have . What can sociologists and psychologists learn about the world that they couldnt 30 years ago because of this . This is so important because i think the hardest the hard conversation we need to have is that we absolutely need to be able to keep access to the interaction thats happening online precisely because so much of what we do as humans every day happens online. So the loss to the fields that try to understand human behavior, try to improve policies around support for online communities, a lot of my research, we need to be able to study peoples experiences of the world as more and more of those move to a digital environment. I think there would be such a tremendous loss if we dont work out these questions. Can you tell us some stories about particular things that were learned . A lot of my Early Research was around young people identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender or questioning their sexuality or gender how they use the internet particularly for young people in Rural Communities mostly in the southeast, kentucky, tennessee, west virginia. So being able to study, and what i learned from studying their experiences of going online, i learned what were the limits of what they could get online that really meant they needed to advocate for resources in their home communities. Early 1990s to late 1990s the story was the internet will solve everything. Well be able to just get a broadband connection, then it was a dialup connection, well have all the information we possibly need. Thats not true. That has yet to be shown as the solution to social problems. So in my research, and i think there are other examples of this, seeing the limits to what people can do with technologies and seeing what are the Public Resources that they need and private sector resources that they need to make up the difference, we can only learn if were studying both parts of that puzzle, both the offline and the online. What were your tools . Were you looking at google searches and things . Were you sitting down with the kids . I was sitting down with the kids. So this was certainly before i had moved to Microsoft Research and most of what i had access to and i think there was another issue in terms of the data available, if its a private company, i dont have access to the search logs. I dont have access to the back end. As a researcher, at a university, what i did have access to were finding young people who were using Digital Media. I did it two ways. I did a lot of im an anthropologist by training. I went to these communities. I found those kids. Theyre not actually that hard to find. And i talked with them. I said, you know, who are your friends who are afraid to come to these meetings who are using Digital Media as their primary connection to the world . I talked with those young people and spent a year doing that research which is i think what it takes which is probably why im so afraid of situations where if we just stay at the surface level, the gods eye view of what people are doing online, we both risk giving people the sense that its creepy and i want to stay away rom these worlds but we also risk not being able to access those young people or other communities through other means. Professor gray, Microsoft Research is not a nonprofit place. No. How does your research benefit a company such as microsoft . Im in a really exceptional and i think special environment, because the expectation is that the research that i do, and right now im studying digital labor, so, for example, the project im doing on crowd sourcing right now, the goal is that i will be able to do basic research, answer basic questions, and that the contributions that i make to the scientific fields that can learn from what i gather will eventually be able to show better technologies, better routes to what Companies Like Microsoft Might have to offer. So there isnt an expectation that i am developing something specific. Its really a very Old Fashioned, basic belief that basic science advances all of us including technology companies. Well, so many people that are watching this are thinking, oh, my goodness. I clicked on a website and all of a sudden tabs for that website started popping up. How pervasive is the big data . How much do private companies, microsoft, etcetera, know about us . So, i think the being really precise here they dont necessarily know about you, the individual. What they have is a picture and the aggregate of what are a population of people, a specific age, a specific time, a specific location doing. What are they asking . So i think the challenge here is that, yes. I dont think anybody can deny this. There would always be a way to trace it back, trace that individuals search query to them individually. I dont know any company that actually collects information in ways that make it easy to identify a single individual in that aggregate picture. So when theyre collecting data, theyre really collecting it in bulk, you might say. Its very difficult to get to that information, so to be able to, as somebody internal to the company, i have to go through aappropriately a lot ofgatekeepers who protect the privacy of individual users. None of these companies would exist if they were making it easy to access your private information. The challenge, and this is part of the conversation, is that most of the companies have only thought about the users concern around privacy. So theyve only taken up and are very good at safe gaurgding your Social Security number, your exact location, they wont divulge that information. Theyve worked very hard to keep others from getting that information. Thats never bullet proof any more than somebody calling you at home and getting your Social Security number is not impossible either. In all cases, Tech Companies have put a lot of time into thinking about protecting your privacy, and that means that they dont know a lot about you as an individual that can be easily dished up. What they havent had to think about is that you actually might care about your information being respected. But you might not want to see an advertisement thats related to a recent instant Message Exchange that you just had. Thats what theyre really trying to figure out how is whats a respectful way of dealing with information, not just a way of protecting your information. And i think that theres a lot of conversation about what that could look like, but, yes. They know a lot about what all folks using their systems are doing, because they need to know that to improve their system. That, i think, in terms of educating the general public, making it very clear to the general public that any effort to give them advertising thats tailored to them, any effort to make it easier for them to see tweets from one set of people instead of another set of people, all of that energy means i have to collect a lot of information about what youre doing. Whats your sense of whats driving that Online Privacy and online respect for information conversation . Because a lot of studies tend to show that people are very concerned about privacy if you want them to pay for g mail dont give up the privacy. Its fascinating to me. The pew research on internet and life just came out with a study not too long ago precisely about this. What are people willing to give up in terms of Information Online . Most peoples sense of what it is theyre protecting when they online very much works from that privacy framework. We all tend to think about what do i worry about sharing as an individual. We havent thought that much about, what am i uncomfortable sharing about our exchanges to people. When im going online and having a Text Exchange with, say, three other people, im not necessarily thinking about privacy in that moment. Im with a group of people. In my mind, you know, i dont know if this is your experience, when i go online and im talking with a group of people im not thinking about my individual privacy. Im really thinking about our shared relationship in relation to the privacy or confidentiality of what we might be talking about. I might care deeply about keeping a conversation confidential like for the young people that i worked with. So i think the problem and the challenge is that right now were thinking about privacy and kind of Old Fashioned ways that have to do with, say, a Social Security number, a home address, a location. And those are not necessarily the kinds of information that i might feel protective about when im thinking about the recent facebook study, when im thinking about what might feel intrusive about what a company is doing. Its a moving target for both the people using these services in terms of thinking whats the privacy that matters most, and its a moving target for companies. Very quickly, here are some pew some of the pew top numbers. 80 in the study agree theyre concerned with government tracking. 64 think more should be done to regulate advertisers. 61 disagree that online is more efficient because of personal data sharing. 55 are willing to share for free online services. 81 dont feel secure using social media. Oh, wow. I didnt remember it was as high as 81 . I think the i want to circle back to something you asked about before. The education around what it is thats shared online is key here because i think in most cases when people are thinking about their safety or their security online, theyre becoming increasingly aware that the information is being collected and is not in all cases being collected to improve their experience of a service. Its to sell them a product. So i would argue we need to get to that place where were not talking about a free service. It is not free. In exchange for a service, we are paying with the information that we put online. So with any of these services, it really comes down to being able to say, is it worth it to me to be able to to have this account if i know that advertising in the same way that, you know, a telemarketer could call me at home, that im giving up information that will be made available to those advertisers . Thats the exchange. Its not free. That is an interesting point. I was curious when you talked about the monitoring the amount of information being gathered is focused largely on product improvement. There are cases where in industries most prominently apple and google both offering encryption for smart phones, where privacy has become the product improvement. Its what people are selling on. That hasnt happened in most things on the internet. Why is that . Because i think a loft the money thats made for internetbased Services Comes from advertising. Look, for most of these companies, and i think crosoft is lucky its in the advantaged position of not needing to rely on selling your information to be able to keep its business going. Other companies that are primarily selling your information to keep themselves alive, any Company Based on an advertising revenue model, they need you to keep giving information and feeding it because the only thing they can really profit on is selling your, not just your personal information, but your activity. Your social information. Selling that to an advertiser. So i think there are companies that if they have other products and they can in many ways sell privacy as a luxury item, which i find is something we really need to discuss as a society, then theyre going to have the advantage, because they dont have to rely on advertising dollars. In cases where a company has to rely on those advertising dollars it doesnt have the luxury of being able to say i wont sell your information because thats what they have to sell. How is this going to change in the next 10 or 15 years as the internet as things developed . Kenmore can be selling information about all the junk we take out of our fridge at midnight. Yes. I absolutely can picture that day. I think thats why we have two roads. The future will look like an accelerated version of the selling of our personal and our social information or it will be a path where we make decisions as consumers about what we want sold and what we dont. The internet presents a new set of opportunities to have that conversation because youre right. As soon as you have as soon as you have the capacity to collect information on any activity that youre doing, there is going to be a desire to get that information. So its going to be up to i think the public to be able to say these are the expectations i hold ransparency that for companies trafficking or selling my information. Unfortunately, until there is enough of a public expectation of both companies and researchers respecting their information, its going to be a land grab. And, finally, professor gray, joe asked about advice for companies. What about advice for consumers . What would you advise to consumers who feel a little creep factor here . Its really tough right now. I dont think consumers have very many options. They absolutely should and always will have options with researchers because they can always come back to us and say thats not okay with me. In all cases, researchers need to be held accountable for their collecting of any information that involves human interaction. Thats very that is made very clear. We have a mandate to do that. But in the cases of dealing with a company that might be collecting in fings and a consumer is trying to figure out exactly what kind of information, theyre not given very many tools to figure that out. So the most i can imagine a consumer being able to do is really educating themselves on how much of their interactions are tracked to benefit a product and they need to decide are they willing to have that tracking part of their experience online and really get out of the framework that its free because they are the product in that moment. Its not free. Professor, Microsoft Researcher, mary gray has been our guest. Joe marks has been our guest reporter from politico. Cspan, created by americas Cable Companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a Public Service by your local cable or atellite provider. On this weekends newsmakers john yu is our guest. He served as Deputy Assistant attorney general in the george w. Bush administration when he wrote several memos that are viewed as providing legal rationale for using enhanced interrogation techniques in questioning terrorism suspects. He talks about the recently watch the interview sunday at 10 00 a. M. And 6 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. World big president jim young cam about Climate Change priorities ahead of the lima, Peru International conference. Came at an event hosted by the council on foreign relations. This is about hour