Successful Workplace

As the NSA PRISM debacle continues to unfold and spreads across continents it’s probably good to stop and think about the technology and philosophy behind it all. Because this is big data and analytics in its most potent and controversial form and it’s certainly not the last time we’ll see this hit the headlines. The […]

The brouhaha over NSA’s PRISM project that involved spying on Verizon customers and asking Silicon Valley giants for access to their customer records is a bit of false indignation, if you ask me (what, you didn’t ask me?). First, there have been warnings for years about our loss of privacy. Secondly, and may more importantly, […]

Most people working in technology are in some way part of the vast conversation taking place around Big Data. That has to be hundreds of thousands if not millions of individuals. “Powerful insights” is the commonly heard phrase. It should also be completely clear to the public by now that data in large enough sets, […]

Is there nowhere left to hide, even for the rich? Andorra announced that they’ll begin phasing in taxes to comply with European regulators looking to prevent tax cheats from hiding their money in this tiny mountain-locked country in the Pyrenees between France and Spain. Secrecy is a common reason to open bank accounts in places […]

In case you missed 60 Minutes on CBS last night, there’s a new challenge to privacy that is coming faster than people realize and was made more urgent by the terror attack in Boston a month ago. The 60 Minutes piece started with the following: The ability of computers to recognize faces has gotten a […]

The speed with which the Boston Marathon bombing suspects were identified was a remarkable sign that we’re in the age of ubiquitous photos and video of the public square, albeit at a major international event. We’ve written a few times about privacy in the age of Big Data, with a focus on what happens when […]

This week a US Senator wrote to a tech firm which tracks and monitors consumers and asked them to change their practices. Euclid Analytics uses technology and data to help retailers build a consumer relationship by turning in-store behavior into insights and recommendations for improving marketing, merchandising, and operations. They do this by using the […]

In our haste to study larger and larger amounts of data and find information, there’s a point getting lost in the excitement…those are people who often haven’t given their permission for their data to be used for just any purpose. This isn’t a small problem or isolated problem. The use of consumer data to understand […]

There’s been a slew of privacy changes in Facebook in the last 6 months, Graph Search was announced last week and they’re trialing a new ‘pay to message’ service for people outside of your network (as well as the premium $100 price tag to spam Zuckerberg himself). It’s nothing new, LinkedIn has had this networking […]

If you’ve consistently read my posts (that means you, Mom), you know I’ve recently been intrigued by electronic monitoring and tracking of human behavior. As humans, we have very peculiar beliefs when it comes to being tracked by technology. We seem to be OK with it if, 1) we don’t know it’s happening, 2) we get something for it […]

We watched an arguable military hero, General David Petraeus, fall from grace over the past week based on an affair he had with another Army officer. But wait, didn’t he retire and take a civilian position? Did he break any laws? Did he share any classified information? Oh, that’s right…no, no and no. This incident […]

A collaboration by Ron Webb and Chris Taylor We’ve become a society used to the idea of giving up some amount of privacy in exchange for a service or discount. We understand that free services like Facebook have a catch that involves exchanging our personal details for something in return, in this case, a platform […]

I recently co-authored a blog post for HBR on the marketplace for privacy where we assert that there is a price to be paid for your health-related information. Technology is a key driver to participating wisely in privacy commerce, so you will need to become your own CIO to make sure you know when to […]

Humans are predictable sorts. While we’re all slightly different, our biology and similarity of experience on the planet conspire to make us more like each other than not. The 2010 French movie Babies showed us that infants from the Mongolian Steppes, African bush, Tokyo and San Francisco all progress in nearly the same way, at […]

My raucous (and sometimes embarrassing)  student life  is captured on some photos that are probably lying curled up in some shoebox in an attic, not stored and backup on hard disks around the world. Not so for the current generation whose lives are on full display. So has privacy disappeared?  Gartner thinks so. “According to […]

While you slept last night, the world around you continued to amass information about everything, including you. Banks processed your purchases. Your credit information was updated and redistributed. The electric company recorded your power usage. As Malte Spitz showed us in his TED piece, your cell phone on your nightstand dutifully reported your location. We’ve […]