The White House's Big Data Review is a Chance to Get Privacy Right

President Obama might have kissed too much spy-industrial complex ass in his surveillance reform speech last Friday, but he did get at least one thing right—the private sector profits handsomely off of mass data mining. Yesterday, John Podesta authored a White House blog post explaining his task of comprehensively reviewing "Big Data," and it's actually the sort of attitude and clear communication the White House needs to adopt on data mining and privacy.

Looking back, Edward Snowden's NSA revelations generated significant anti-government sentiment in 2013. It was a juicy, appalling narrative. Everyone loves a good government surveillance story, and Snowden's leaks managed to unite the political right and left in dark. But the Big Brother headlines obscured the fact that Google, Facebook, and a virtual army of Silicon Valley startups, working with Wall Street money, are already behaving like private surveillance firms. In a world where data is gold, these companies are frighteningly efficient at knowing almost every move we make in our wired lives.

What's tentatively encouraging about Podesta's blog is that he and the president seem determined not to let Silicon Valley off the hook on this issue. And these tech giants and startups deserve every bit of criticism that comes their way. Despite many years of spirited protest by privacy activists and civil liberty groups, for too long the tech sector has been given a free pass; or at least the benefit of the doubt that they put user concerns first and foremost on issues like security. So, what exactly can we expect from Podesta's big data review?

"We are undergoing a revolution in the way that information about our purchases, our conversations, our social networks, our movements, and even our physical identities are collected, stored, analyzed and used," Podesta wrote. "The immense volume, diversity and potential value of data will have profound implications for privacy, the economy, and public policy. The working group will consider all those issues, and specifically how the present and future state of these technologies might motivate changes in our policies across a range of sectors."

A broad outline, to be sure; but, the issue of big data has broad implications for the future. The decisions made in the next few years will determine the future scope of data mining, and either curtail its reach or unleash it in ways that we cannot currently fathom.

Podesta will be joined in the review by the president's senior science and technology advisors, as well as the Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and Secretary of Energy Ernie Moniz. "This is going to be a collaborative effort," Podesta said. "The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) will conduct a study to explore in-depth the technological dimensions of the intersection of big data and privacy, which will feed into this broader effort."

Podesta's group will also consult with privacy experts, civil liberties groups, technologists, international partners, and various government officials. They will also consult with think tanks, academic institutions, and other stakeholders to discuss big data and privacy. Hopefully, theses discussions will be transparent, so Americans and the international community can be kept abreast of any critical developments.

But, all of this will be for naught if Obama fails to adequately respond to the review group's findings, whenever they should come, or does so too quietly. This week, a Pew Research poll found that just 8% of Americans heard anything substantive in the president's surveillance reform speech, mostly because Obama buried his NSA reform speech on a Friday. The speech's timing—as people headed into the weekend—effectively killed any momentum it might have otherwise generated.

If Obama truly wants the big data issue to be addressed in substantive way, then he should deliver a speech on Podesta's finding—on a Monday. Obama should speak on private and public sector data mining, allowing the news cycle to bring a full range of editorials; ones that will actually be read during the week, and discussed at the water cooler. The public should be informed about the scale to which this relatively new phenomenon is taking place.

Podesta said that while a comprehensive new policy wouldn't happen in 90 days, he thinks the review will serve "as the foundation for a robust and forward-looking plan of action." Those are either ambitious words or a crafty smokescreen spoken on behalf of a president that needs to shit or get off the crapper on the issue of privacy. Obama can no longer have it both ways.