Big Data

Description

We leave a digital trail behind us everywhere we go: the calls we make, the emails we send, the links on which we click, the websites and documents that we retrieve. This also includes our social relationships, habits, preferences, even our movements in space and time. IDEAS, CBC RADIO ONE in partnership with the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto weighs the opportunities, the risks — and the trade-offs — as the world of BIG DATA relentlessly changes our lives.

Monday, May 9, 2016, Part 1: The Promise and the Perils of Big Data for Business, for Consumers, and for Society

For business, the promise of BIG DATA is at least as great as that of the Internet itself. Companies can now anticipate what consumers want even before we know it ourselves. As consumers, we get more of what we want, when we want it. But we must also live under constant surveillance as companies chase down the opportunities that we create for them online.

Anita M. McGahan, Professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto; Ashkan Soltani, independent researcher and technologist specializing on issues relating to privacy, security, and behavioral economics, and former Chief of Technology for the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, DC; John Weigelt, National Technology Officer, Microsoft Canada; and moderator Stephen Toope, Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs consider the consequences of Big Data as it changes business – and our lives – for better... and for worse.

Tuesday, May 10, 2016, Part 2: BIG DATA – or – BIG BROTHER? Citizenship and security in the Age of Big Data.

BIG DATA does not evaporate. It accumulates, creating a new, exponentially expanding system of planetary information. The Snowden/NSA revelations have shown that the U.S. and its allies’ secretive “signals intelligence agencies” routinely collect, mine and analyze this system, partly with help from the private companies that operate it. But what are the risks and trade-offs for liberty and privacy? And, who guards against abuses of power when the state watches everything and everyone, all the time?

Ann Cavoukian, Executive Director of the Privacy and Big Data Institute at Ryerson University and former Information and Privacy Commissioner (three terms) for the province of Ontario; Ronald J. Deibert, Oont, Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs; Neil Desai, executive with Magnet Forensics, a software company that provides digital forensic tools to law enforcement and national security agencies around the world; and moderator Stephen Toope, Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs, grapple with BIG DATA , national security and our rights –as citizens–in relation to the State.