On the tip of technological tongues for a several years now, “big data” was the most prominent cool kid catchphrase around Boston last week, as the promising new data-driven bus service Bridj finally debuted, while techies and municipal honchos yapped on panels about this seemingly ambiguous pop political phenomenon.
But what the hell is big data, anyway?
“Nobody knows what it means,” says Matt George, creator of the new “pop-up” bus service Bridj, which just began trial runs. George doesn’t label his venture a “big data company,” but eagerly explains his data-driven business model.
Bridj riders anonymously provide information about their commute, while the company’s platform (formally called GroupZoom) collects any and all reconnaissance about travel patterns it can find. “We use millions and millions of data points to understand how a city is moving,” George says. “Once we understand where the biggest movements are happening in the city, we deploy direct shuttle routes between those two areas.”
George isn’t alone in his enthusiasm for dramatic shifts in Mass transit. On a panel about tech and transportation at District Hall in Southie last week, Massachusetts Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Richard Davey–by some means a direct competitor–appeared interested as well.
“We’re going to watch very closely what Bridj is doing,” said Davey. In the spirit of innovative harmony, the secretary added that the DOT may implement similar methods if GroupZoom proves successful. Doubling down, Davey also dropped in on another big data panel the following day at the Statehouse. Co-hosted by State Sen. Karen Spilka of Ashland, the event allowed those present to gush over the potential for harnessed info to improve transportation, energy infrastructure, healthcare, and public safety.
It wasn’t all puffery. Where there’s big data, conceded Davey, there are also privacy concerns. “At the DOT,” he said, “we’ve done a very good job of making sure that data is anonymous.” Perhaps, but other agencies haven’t. Last year, for example, Boston police suspended their automatic license plate reader program after accidentally releasing an embarrassing trove of vehicle data to MuckRock.com and the Boston Globe, the mere existence of which proved BPD violated its own privacy policy.
“As a legislator, I keep those competing interests at heart all the time,” Spilka said. “In fact, I have one of the strongest privacy bills in the legislature, to require law enforcement to have probable cause and search warrants to get our computer and cell phone records. Right now they don’t need that.”
Indeed, outside the halls of political power and promotional speaker panels, this month has also brought national concern over mass data analysis. The day after Spilka’s event, high-profile entities and organizations such as Reddit, Mozilla, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the ACLU pushed a “Reset the Net” day of protest against government surveillance. Even Google got on board at the last minute, releasing new encryption software, while in Boston, the Massachusetts Pirate Party congregated at the local activism hub Encuentro Cinco in support of the action.
Steve Revilak, “Quartermaster” of the pro-transparency Pirate Party, is a data analyst and a full-time outspoken critic of National Security Agency surveillance. According to him, while the original intent of data collection is generally innocent, problems easily arise down the road when said info is then shared for other uses.
“Let’s just take call detail records,” Revilak says. “If you’ve got a mobile phone, your carrier is going to keep track of that information for billing purposes. So that’s the primary use of it. As a secondary use, the NSA is taking it and using it to map out social connections between people, and other things like who is where, when …
“Doing these kinds of things with people’s personal information that’s been gathered and kept for entirely unrelated reasons is where things can get problematic. Data itself isn’t good or bad. It’s the intent and what you’re doing with it.”
FURTHER READING
‘YOUTH PASS’ ACTIVISTS OCCUPY OFFICE OF TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY DAVEY
A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF LATE-NIGHT TRAIN SERVICE IN BOSTON
