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Data Profiles: Fragments from an invisible archive of 21st century identity

INTRODUCTION

Where my recent work has explored nineteenth century historical museum archives, the current series envisions fragments from an imagined fictional data archive, - recognising that where there are 21st century equivalents of nineteenth century categorisations and taxonomies of the human psyche, they exist in numerical form, in code, online, in data form, in files, in vast databases, data warehouses on globally distributed networked servers.

The new work aims to give visual form to these coded encryptions of personal data, creating data profiles or data portraits using photography and digital imaging, to create geometric mathematically generated 3D data portraits or 'profiles'

The notion of the profile is used to bring together portraiture, genetic profiling, criminal profiling, and consumer profiling, and related privacy issues.

SELECTED QUOTES ON DATA PROFILING AND PRIVACY

It's planned that the search terms entered at the web's top destinations will be grabbed in transit and used by Phorm to judge surfers' interests. Because they strongly indicate intentions, they will be some of the most valuable data fed into the targeting algorithm.

You have to use intuition and creativity as well as statistical know-how, and you have to hope that you have identified the right things to test

In the case of human beings the 'original' could be understood as the correlatable human person that forever escapes complete determination.

The profile that emerges on the basis of monitoring your web surfing habits could indicate that you like sailing equipment; that you like refined expensive food and wine; that you go to bed very late; that you read intellectual newspapers, etc. This data could be correlated with data from other – offline – databases,

generating even more specific inferences about your preferences, wishes and desires. Still, this does not mean the profile defines you; rather, it offers an interesting perspective on what motivates you. This knowledge will then be used to customise advertisements, to influence your future buying patterns

data mining often does not depend, or depends only in part, on data explicitly given by data subjects; instead data are recorded without explicit consent – or even knowledge – of the data subject (in real time by video cameras; online tracking of web-users; offline tracking of supermarket customers or banking clients, etc.). This also means the data do not indicate what people say about themselves but represent what they do.

“people having bought the 9th symphony are likely to buy the 8th”or “if the user lives in the region defined by the postal code 12101 or earns less than 5000€ per year, then s/he should not be sent a brochure for insurance”

After the results of the operations have been scrutinised, the resulting profiles will form the basis for certain actions. Often profiles will be used for selection/access purposes: determining for instance employment opportunities, health risks, insurance risks, targeted advertising, categorisation as potential terrorist or criminal.

If the interests of data user and data subject differ it may well be that the interests of the data controller, who pays for the whole process, will take precedence.

Group profiling produces group profiles that can be understood as a kind of prototype or abstract person. A group profile does not represent any particular person, but rather categorises persons as belonging to a certain group of category. Personalised profiling, on the other hand, focuses on the attributes of one individual, identifying and representing her on the basis of biometric features or past behaviour.

Access to either the data and/or the dynamic profiles of a specific individual could lead to the construction of a complex and comprehensive profile that may seem to describe the ‘reality’ of the profiled individual. In combination with advanced personalised services, this comprehensive, real time, dynamic profile would basically infer future behaviour from past behaviour.

The point is that the end user that is the target of all this enhanced servicing seems to be made transparent to an extent that was previously unthinkable. This transparency of the end user to the data user (the service provider, or some government agency that is interested in profiling the individual to prevent crime, illegal immigration, health risks, terrorism

The problem in terms of privacy is the grip data controllers may have on the unconscious behavioral patterns that steer an individual as these could be used to modify or manipulate her future behavior

Personal data are amongst others: one’s name, address and ip-address, phone number, number plate of a car, DNA, location, picture, telecommunication data, shopping record, etc. as far as the data can be linked directly or indirectly to an individual. The IP-address and mobile phone number can be linked with the user who is often the subscriber.

Lastly we should add that natural persons have in principle no (intellectual) property right to their personal data.61 However, some authors do argue for an intellectual property right in “human identity”.62

To provide the best home entertainment experience, interactive television providers monitor and store exactly what is being watched on each television. Using these data, computers are capable of calculating perfectly what kind of content has been watched by the largest group of televisions (group profile) and what content has been watched on a particular television (personalised profile). By the examination of the group profile, broadcasters can stop buying or producing programs that are not often viewed. These group profiles can be sold to other television broadcasters.

It is reasonable to note here that ultimately the price for such increased data flow is likely to be borne by a decrease in potential user privacy as personal information becomes readily and widely linkable.