Big data: Four questions from People's Daily

Question one: Who does the big data belong to?

Xiaoyong: Capturing and recording data requires resources, so data also has attributes of assets. Before the advent of large data, data were attached to specific businesses and people focused more on software systems that used data. Without the use of software, there is no value in data. The question of the attribution of data was not so prominent at the time. In the era of large data, data can be regarded as an independent existence, and its "asset" value has attracted more and more people's attention.

Data is the reflection of the nature and state of objective things in the physical world. You go to collect, there is a specific form of expression, the nature of the specific format of the data is yours. Individuals, businesses, governments, organizations can legitimately collect data. If the data collected in violation of the existing laws are also illegally owned, the data property is also illegal.

Kenneth Chukil: Individuals, businesses, governments, etc. may be the owner of the data. For example, mobile operators collect data on the positioning of individuals using GPS. In this case, individuals become the source of large data, mobile communications companies invest and collect large data to provide users with better services. Similarly, the Government can have specific data such as census data, weather information, postcode, etc. However, we will impose some restrictions on how large data is used or whether it should be collected.

Huang Zhixeng: With the popularity of smartphones, networks and satellite positioning systems, everyone's every move produces a lot of data. Individuals who buy mobile phones and sign mobile contracts may agree that mobile internet companies have access to information such as personal locations.

Future data ownership and the concept of personal privacy may become increasingly irrelevant, and over time, people's perceptions of privacy are changing. For example, in the case of personal location data, people would have been reluctant to be informed about their whereabouts. Nowadays, no one seems to be using mobile phones to keep people from knowing their whereabouts.

European demand for public information is growing, and legislation in the European Union and European countries is moving in that direction. In the case of the Netherlands, most of the information has been made public, in addition to public information on national security and personal privacy. The public also have the right to apply information to the government.

Zhu Yangyang: Regarding the Data property, there are currently gaps in the law, applying the current law of property law or copyright law and other related laws may have some problems. Therefore, we can only talk about the rationality of the attribution of data rights. Since data is not natural, it is reasonable to say that "data should be a producer of data." However, many times it is difficult for data owners to assert their rights, which requires the enactment of appropriate laws in the future. There are now two main problems: one is how to define the data when there are multiple producers, and the other is how to define the data when it comes to secrecy and privacy.

For the first question, it can be solved by negotiation. For example, when someone is shopping on an E-commerce website, the data produced by the shopping behavior can be owned by the shopper and the electric trader (and possibly a third-party payment platform). In general, personal shopping data is almost useless to individuals, and is currently free of charge by the electric business. For example, micro-blog data now almost as a personal asset to see, so microblogging operators can not freely occupy the use of micro-blog data, need to negotiate treatment. For the second question, the law needs to be defined. For example, medical records are produced jointly by patients and doctors and hospitals, and hospital sales of medical records are bound to run into problems, not the assertion of data rights, but the privacy concerns of patients.

Question two: Who controls the big data?

Kenneth Chukil: No institution or person has the final control over large data. This depends on the specific situation, namely, what type of data, and for what purpose. For example, our smartphone sensors may identify people around us. Does that mean I violate other people's privacy? Yes, maybe. But this is different from the era of mass photography in the 20 's. In those days, if someone was taking pictures of you on the street or filming you, you would feel disturbed. But today, most people don't care when they are filmed by hundreds of smartphones in front of the Louvre in Paris.

Victor Maire Schoenberg: We are still in the initial stage of the big data age, who will control the big data or who to use, under what conditions under what norms, large data future storage and flow mode, are still in the unknown state, we can not give accurate answers. But there have been many attempts to do so in all areas of society, and there will certainly be more innovation in the future.

The future focus on the management of large data standards still needs to focus on the use of personal information, rather than the process of data acquisition and transaction. The process of collecting data does not cause much trouble, and the key problem is the potential for data abuse. Because internet companies can collect a great deal of valuable data and have a strong interest drive to exploit the data, internet companies have naturally become the leading practitioners of the latest processing technology. They are even more than many offline companies with decades of experience as leading users of new technologies. But the truth is that the government is the original collector of massive information and is competing with the private sector for the bulk of the data they control.

Huang Zhixeng: At present the data on the network is huge, but most of the data are managed by the company. For example, a personal mail system, no matter which company the individual uses the mail system, the provider can see these messages. But the employees of these companies must comply with professional ethics, and have strict access rules and regulations, the law of private viewing or disclosure of other people's online privacy behavior will be severely hit.

Public data can be managed by the government, but the law must be strictly observed. In Europe, individuals, companies and organizations have the right to refuse to provide data to Governments or law enforcement agencies. For example, while I was studying in Amsterdam, the Dutch police asked our school to provide the address of all Chinese students, but the school said Dutch law did not stipulate that we were obliged to provide such information to the police. But if national security is involved and there is law to follow, then European governments have the right to manage the relevant data.

Question three: How long will the big data be stored?

Victor Maire Schoenberg: The time we are in is different because the data collection no longer has inherent limitations. Technology has developed to a point where a lot of information can be captured and recorded cheaply. Data collection is often passive, and people do not need to invest too much effort or even recognize the data. And, because of the significant drop in storage costs, it is easier to save data than to discard it. This makes it more likely to get more data at a lower cost than ever before. In the past 50 years, the cost of digital storage has been cut by about half every two years, while the storage density has increased by 50 million times times. The direct value of most of the data is obvious to collectors. The basic use of data provides a basis for the collection and processing of information.

Over time, most of the data loses some of its basic uses. In this case, continuing to rely on the old data not only adds value, but actually destroys the value of the new data. However, not all data are devalued. Some companies advocate keeping data as long as possible, even if regulators or the public require them to delete or conceal such information for a short time. This explains why Google has all along refused to remove Internet protocol addresses from old search queries altogether. Google hopes to get annual year-on-year data, such as holiday shopping search.

Huang Zhixeng: There seems to be no legislation currently requiring the destruction of data after a certain timeframe. such as the bank's personal financial information and so on, but require a certain period of time is not allowed to destroy. And now the cost of storing data is low, so companies try to store the data they generate. Although the headquarters of the world's leading technology companies is mostly in the United States, not all data are stored in the United States, and there are servers and storage systems for these companies all over the world. But the senior managers of these technology companies can easily access data from around the world. In this respect, it is not important where the store is, as long as the network can connect. The government will not destroy the so-called "national security" information collected by the United States Government, and it will only accumulate more and more. Compared to lower storage costs, the real cost is filtering and computing costs. It is difficult to pick the same useful information from the mountain data as sand.

Although the current WEB3.0 system has been able to do low intelligence, large amount of data screening work, but still can not reach the actual combat needs, instead of human role. This is a mountain of data, is a burden on the government, but also a chicken. But it cannot be said that the data will not be used, such as the police identified a criminal identity, you can legally to the network service providers, mobile service providers to obtain all the information before the offender, and through the accumulated information for analysis and screening.

Fadi Shehad: The Internet name and digital address distribution Agency (ICANN) was founded entirely by the United States government, leading to discontent among many non-English speaking countries, especially in developing countries. Internet domain name is equivalent to the number of cyberspace, is a global system. ICANN signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce in 2009 and is no longer responsible for the sector and has more say in ICANN's regulatory global domain Name System. We should increase the transparency of the Internet, and not let a country or region to control the Internet, countries, regions should be more equal share of network data resources.

Xiaoyong: The organization that owns the data can decide where to put the data, how to save it, and how long. If the data is the lifeblood of the enterprise, he will naturally consider a variety of factors such as security, economy and efficiency. For information security, enterprises generally take off-site backup and other means of higher cost. It is said that some companies with better data back-up systems soon resumed their operations after the "events", while others went bankrupt as a result of data damage. How long the enterprise data is stored is also a decision that needs to be weighed against a variety of factors. This is an act of enterprise autonomy, unless there are other legal requirements for the business to be based on these data.

We may be concerned about another issue, namely, information security at the national level. Some people put forward the concept of "information territory". In other words, land, sea, space have the attributes of the state (territory, territorial waters, airspace), the digital space is also the concept of "sovereignty"? Large multinationals, through their various businesses, permeate every aspect of their daily lives, so that they can collect data from all aspects of a country. As a result, foreign institutions may even have more knowledge of a country than the country itself, which clearly poses a direct threat to national security.

Therefore, it is necessary for the state to restrict the data transmission, backup, data use and so on of multinational enterprises. The State should guarantee this legislation. Some of the data are protected by law, such as surveying data and other kinds of data, and there is no such law at the moment.

Question four: How to use large data?

Victor Maire Schoenberg: As the world begins to move into the big Data age, society will experience similar crustal movements. While changing the way we live and think, big data is already pushing us to rethink the most basic principles, including how to encourage growth and how to curb its potential threats. However, unlike the printing revolution, we do not have a few centuries to adapt, we may only have a few years.

In the era of large data, tinkering with the original norms is not enough to meet the needs, but also insufficient to curb the risk of large data, we need a new system norms. We need to set up a different pattern of privacy protection, which should focus more on data users taking responsibility for their actions, rather than focusing on gaining personal approval at the beginning of data collection.

Kenneth Chukil: Specification of large data technology is the key to the problem. First, it is possible to shift from the emphasis on monitoring of large data collection to focusing on the actual use of large data. Second, the big data can become less mysterious and no longer a "black box", increasing transparency and accountability in large data applications. A new profession called "jurists" could be created, which would receive specialized training in computer technology, statistics and data processing to assess the application of large data to ensure that the public was reassured by large data systems.

As for balancing the right to privacy and national security, Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, had long raised the question: "How do we monitor the keeper?" Even in his time, there was no simple answer to the question.

Steve Palmer: The real opportunity that big data brings us is to put a lot of pieces of information together and serve our decision. The biggest challenge in the big Data age is how to get "value" from big data. To obtain the maximum value from the large data, we need the exploratory research method. In the future, data scientists will be very popular, such scientists should be familiar with both the business environment and the operational level of knowledge.

Xiaoyong: A lot of problems on the use of data! As an asset, data is involved in management issues, so "data governance" becomes increasingly important. The information world also needs the Convention, will be the theft of other people's data as a crime, to attack others system as a crime, from the criminal law to make clear provisions, together to create a civilized and orderly digital life, should be our ideal. In the big data age, we need to follow up on this as soon as possible, such as inter-State dialogue and the formation of a convention.

Companies use data mining technology to carry out accurate advertising, but also involves privacy issues. A girl received a baby supplies ads, her father furious, to sue the enterprise. The fact is that the maiden was pregnant. In this story, the enterprise is using their own collection of customer shopping data, the use of their own development of data mining software, the whole process is no problem. But in fact it violates personal privacy and should be resolutely opposed. There should be some legal issues that need to be studied carefully.

Zhu Yangyang: "The big Data age, data as a resource, not to be shared is the trend." "In this case, the use of data must be exchanged for value." In the premise of determining data rights and interests, the use of data is paid use. The law needs to define the rights and interests of the data, the Government defines the type of data (which is privacy, which concerns national security), etc.

Before the current laws and regulations are not clear, we should pay more attention to the security of data resources from the angle of national security. As individuals, understand that "there is action that can produce data", so when some behavior involves privacy, need to be cautious.

On a larger scale, the data that is publicly available in public networks should belong to the entire human race, and anyone has the right to access, use and benefit. This can play the role of data resources to a greater extent, so that the data for human life and production to bring more convenience for human social progress has important significance.