This is not really an issue, or even a 'first world problem ' but can we stop comparing Big Da...

[G+_Damian Mongru]

This is not really an issue, or even a 'first world problem' but can we stop comparing Big Data the NSA (and real life events in general) to Minority Report. It is wrong in so many ways, and the metaphor doesn't even work. Some random thoughts on the matter:

 

This might be because I have few problems with pre-crime (apart from those raised by the film itself*). As an example, the lady having an affair at the start of the film was going to be killed, do you wait until she dies, and then arrest the murderer? Of course not. Furthermore, if you have precogs who could help you find the murderer, would you not stop the crime?

 

Also, crime prevention 'is a thing'. The police try to do it now, not just to deter crime but to stop it before it happens.

 

On TWiT, they said the NSA/Big Data issue was similar to Minority Report, by storing your previous uses on the Internet they could look at data from past activity and use it to find incidents to justify arrests/surveillance/interrogation etc in the present. This may be a bit sneaky by the government, but it is not Minority Report.

 

I guess whenever someone tries to relate real life events to Minority Report you know it is an inaccurate lazy simile. If they start an argument or discussion with 'It's like Minority Report...'the rest of their argument is invalid.

 

*One of the problems in the film was how can you justify arresting/haloing someone who hasn't committed a crime yet.

[G+_John Clark]

The minority report analogy is rather flawed.  The NSA business is a different kind of bad:  It's potential blackmail storage.

 

You'll be hard pressed to go through life without committing numerous felonies (terms of service violations for example) over things that are silly and shouldn't be major crimes in the first place.  Granted, crappy laws should be fixed but they'll always be around in one form or another.  Given that these sort of crappy laws and penalties will exist, this sort of big data collection opens the door for retroactively building up a big secondary case against you to force you into plea bargain for a primary case that might be weak or even wrong.  

[G+_Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ]

Well... the way Big Data has been used IS like Minority Report --- you're not just collecting data, you're collecting correlations.

 

Take a look at TWiEt episode 30 (

) for a discussion of how correlations are drawn.

 

If you're collecting metadata and are able to make connections between certain "individuals of interest" you can use a relational database like HADOOP to look at patterns within the data set to draw conclusions about likely outcomes. 

 

Let me give you a real-world example:

Not too long ago I was playing with Hadoop and some of the data that we were getting from the wireless arrays at Interop. I used Splunk's Hadoop-based tool to collect data on devices connected to the network: everything from location to type of device being used, frequency of access and amount of bandwidth being used. With that data, I was able to correlate certain types of activity (high usage spike with phones, lower usage by laptops, movement away from the core area, drop in bandwith consumption) with large crowds moving into the casino areas. -- Sure enough, the network cameras could see "waves" of attendees moving into the casino areas every time we say that particular pattern of data points.

 

It was a predictive analysis of crowd movement using nothing more than metadata. 

 

So... if I can accurately predict something that will happen in 5-10 minutes time using a tool that gathers impossibly large sets of data from disparate sources... isn't that like Minority report?

[G+_Darrell S]

I dislike comparing real events to movies. Movies are a writer's brain dump and aren't based On reality.

[G+_Rob Harrison]

Yes, you're right. It's definitely more Orwellian than minority report. So like 1984 it's scary all we need is a government we don't trust to truly take advantage. Oh, hang on... Yep we're screwed.

 

A good simile can help shock your audience into thinking and with issues this serious I think we all need a bit of a shock. However, you're completely right, the minority report connection is a bit tentative.

 

I'm just concerned about people in power deciding to pick off citizens they take a disliking to, for saying the wrong thing perhaps or political gain. They could choose to use this power to imprison or discredit people who say the wrong thing, maybe people with the wrong sexual orientation, colour of skin or religion perhaps. With the wrong leader it's kind of like Nazi Germany really isn't it?

[G+_Damian Mongru]

Thinking about this a little more, I guess the two problems I have are the misuse of the Minority Report simile and that it is bad in the first place.

 

Firstly, the misuse of the Minority Report simile as already discussed is in using past data. As Rob Harrison  and John Clark  mention, the most used example at the moment is the government store the 5ZB of data which may hold past infringes of the law. This data can then be used to justify more thorough investigations of any persons of interest. This is effectively a background check, it uses past events and is not Minority Report-ish at all.

 

Fr. Robert Ballecer, SJ 's example is more like it. There is probably only a philosophical difference between 'seeing the future' and 'predicting the future with 100% accuracy'. Part of beauty of predictions is that you can change your behaviour to accommodate what is expected. I prefer this use of Minority Report - it has to be about prediction of future events. Also, I'm not sure if I am part of the TWiET riot (I don't listen live) but every Tuesday a new podcast appears and all is right with the world.

 

Secondly, there is a negative connotation to what happens in Minority Report. As I mentioned, if there was a method to stop crime before it happens, in a lot of cases this is a good thing! The argument that we shouldn't do something, it's too much like Minority Report is a bit of a non sequitur for me.