We are sure: the data will revolutionize the world, but who will really benefit? In 2011, consulting firm Gartner said: "Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the engine of combustion". In spite of this metaphor, each one legitimately raises the question of who tomorrow will be the tycoons of the given ... More, what will be the methods of the giants of today and tomorrow: will they be, like the oil giants in their time , at the limit of legality? Will there be oil spills? Will there be collusion with our policies?
21st Century Petrolueum
Our society, our economy, our lifestyles will be profoundly altered by the data that now carries much of the growth of Western countries. In this sense, it is the oil of the 21st century. But where a landowner got rich from an oil well on his land, what about our data? What is their value? Will she come back to us? Every day, every moment, each one of us generates a lot of personal or professional data, data belonging to himself, his company or published on the Internet or harvested by third parties.
That's why many companies offer free mail, data sharing services. The datum has value only if it is massive. Having services that allow global users to collect their users' data is vital for GAFAM - Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft - who are masters in the valuation and monetization of our personal data.
Future data "oil spills"
If the data is the new oil, what happens when the data escapes? Whether it is the work of pirates who voluntarily steal data or are accidental escapes, no one is immune. The news is full of revelations of large-scale incidents. One can cite the theft of 412 million accounts of the site of meeting AldultFriendFinder in 2016 or an error that allowed the dispersion of confidential information on the members of the G20. Other examples could be used to illustrate these massive leaks, but there is a much greater danger to users.
Thus, many sites trade in your login data, but beyond the sale, the information is aggregated from different sources to make them more relevant to hackers. Basic security rules dictate that users do not use the same login and password on different sites. But honestly did not you happen to derogate from this rule?
A strong geopolitical issue
Let us not be naive: mastering the data is a primordial geopolitical stake. There is often a tendency, and large groups are involved, to believe that the Internet, the cloud and all the tools around the data are beyond any notion of nationality. Now, on closer inspection, the United States, and California in particular, are hegemonic about our data. Caricatured to the extreme, to the question "Who benefits from the explosion of our data? ", One answer might be: Silicon Valley.
To convince oneself of the geopolitical aspect of the data, let us note for example the decision of the American justice, confirmed on appeal on April 19 last, to oblige Google to provide the data stored outside the United States. China has also understood this by pursuing a policy of determined protectionism that allowed the BATXs (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi) to thrive in the face of GAFAM. The BATX, strongly supported by the Chinese state, now aim to conquer the international market and Europe in particular.
OPEC of the data
The latter seems stuck in an outdated view of computers and the Internet. The beneficiaries of the explosion of data will be numerous in Europe: telephone operators and digital services companies: they will benefit from this revolution. And we will not forget the many start-ups that emerge around the Internet of objects and data analysis. But let's not be mistaken, the only real beneficiaries of the explosion of data will be those who will own them within their data-centers! Will GAFAM and other BATXs create, thanks to their infrastructures, the OPEC of the data that will fix the course of your data on the world markets?
Source: www.theconversation.com - June 14th, 2017