The Algorithm of You: Your Profile of Preference or an Agent for Evil?

Abstract

This essay explores the topic of individual users data collected from mobile applications (apps) in the context of the ethical and legal implications that stem from informed consent given to the app developers through privacy and terms of use agreements. Of particular interest are the threats posed to the U.S. military as well as the ethical dilemmas posed by these activities to the populace writ large. After all military personnel are also private citizens and these data collections are particularly troubling since they enable effective profiling and allow adversaries to do the same. The ubiquitous nature of the digital world allows a robust model of a particular user to be built from the voluminous records that track and record their behaviors. This too has implications on national security as algorithms could ultimately be employed as surrogates for individual people.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 30, 2017
Accession Number
AD1083852

Entities

People

  • James J. Peltz

Organizations

  • Naval War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Biometric Security
  • Commerce
  • Computational Linguistics
  • Economics
  • Governments
  • Information Science
  • Information Systems
  • Internet
  • Law
  • Linguistics
  • Machine Learning
  • Mobile Application Software
  • Mobile Phones
  • Personnel Management
  • Political Movements
  • Social Media
  • Social Networking Services

Readers

  • Agent-Based Social Robotics and Mobile-Assisted Learning in Virtual Environments.
  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development
  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.