In a very real way, financial institutions are now data institutions -- and the "too-big-to-fail" ones are grabbing all the power that comes with the hoarding of information.
Still, it's a sign of Big Data's limitations that these banks would have failed anyway if taxpayers hadn't rescued them. We've forgotten that metadata, whether it's used for credit scores, algorithmic trading, or national security, is inherently subject to flaws -- flaws which can't be fixed when it's operated in secret or purely out of self-interest.
Metadata as Ideology
Eisenhower warned that the Military/Industrial Complex's "total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual (emphasis ours) -- is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government ..."
We face, in Eisenhower's words, a spiritual threat, that of Metadata as Ideology. We idealize this algorithmic methodology, even surrender our liberties to it, while overlooking the flawed human origin of the process itself. Speaking as a former designer of large information systems, I recognize that it's a very useful analytical technique. But as an ideology it's antithetical to a democratic society:
Where democracy serves the human, metadata serves the mechanical and quantifiable.
Where democracy serves a society, metadata serves its masters.
Where democracy values the individual, metadata values the "set."
Where democracy is self-correcting (at least in design), metadata is self-replicating and self-reinforcing.
The Long Struggle
The technology is new, but the struggle is old: Corporations like the Dutch East Indies Company and the British East India Company used traded goods to drive a wave of global colonization. Corporations in the Military/Industrial Complex made money from mass-produced weapons of iron and steel.
The weapons of the 21st Century are made of electrons, not metal. But human nature doesn't change. The Military/Industrial Complex robs our nation of its wealth and many people of their lives. the Security/Digital Complex takes our wealth and has the potential to invade and monitor virtually every aspect of our lives. In the end, that could make it even more powerful than its predecessor.
Booz Allen Hamilton's corporate slogan is "Delivering results that endure." Results that endure? That's exactly what should worry us.
(UPDATE: I chose the word "whistleblower" with care. The AP Standards Editor says that term means "a person who exposes wrongdoing." I believe there is clear evidence that "exposing wrongdoing" is precisely what Snowden has done.)
(Graph: Booz Allen Hamilton's Post-9/11 Growth)
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