about the collection and use of personal data by private companies any questions what it means for our privacy. as a case study he used caesars entertainment which he says has perfected the practice of gathering personal data from its customers. he spoke at the fordham university school of law in new york city. >> i'm glad to be with you here. i thought i would start this talk with going back in time about a cordova centric in episode, in the final years of communism in eastern europe 1988 and east berlin. at the time this is one of the strictest countries, one of the most rigid communist countries in the commonest block ally to moscow. i visited there a number of times and in 1988 and predictors something quite interesting happen but i visited dresden

which is the cultural capital of germany, city well known as being bombed during world war ii. at the time a city coastal partially can really, some of it famous monuments in rubble. during that day i was followed by the secret police. i want to get a quick indication of what the times looked like back then. here's a picture of the bread store in east berlin in 1980. you see a long line of people trying to get rid. there's still damage on the building. there's a lot of the better things that workers could have done with their time but if it is a good idea to follow me around on this august day in 1988. this is me taking notes on the street. they took secret photos of me and they followed me around minute by minute try to assess what is up to. go forward a little bit, this year is the schedule, the outline of a 60 page file just for that day. here's what it says, for example. at 8:00 the observatiobservati

on has become. 85853 -- 8:53 a.m., 8:55 a.m. iq that opera. than going to the antiquity store and so and so forth. they make a log of the day and if you read the file in greater detail than you see what is up to in a lot of detail. some of it is comical because of wonderment about what it says 10:57 looking at a map. 11:03 asking a passerby for directions. is clueless moments our interest well. you may say what has aroused the interest of the secret police and one of the most efficient states of the communist world at that time? this is what i was up to. i was writing a trouble guidebook for the eastern europe and yugoslavia on $25 a day. the interesting thing about that is even though i had a secret

police polymet about during that time, they knew very little about me compared to what corporate interests know about most people in the united states today. because information gathering in the electronic era, and internet air is much more efficient, easier to gather and thank you letter to one place over time. and a much greater profile. i began to wonder who collects data about us today, what do these people look like? that's one of the motivations of my book, "what stays in vegas." here's a little test case example. this is someone who gathers the data it gives a person perhaps the most surprising data gatherer i've come across during my research. can anyone guess who this is? it's usually -- it usually stems

the audience. he is 70 years old and he was once considered a god. here's the answer. this is jimmy page have led zeppelin. if you go to the site, jimmy page.com, just use the site, to go beyond this page is asking you for your first name, last in camino address and your date of birth. he wants all of this information just to you can go into jimmy page.com. that story, if jimmy page and wild rock 'n roll is gathering data about you, there are few companies that are not. another story he was referencing before i wanted to tell is the way came to the realization of everyone is affected in different ways and no one is really exempt from the collection of data about them. this is president gerald ford. he died when his working as a correspondent in san francisco. he had been very old and it was expected he would die.

the obituary ran a beating because the tie late in the day california time. the next day i thought how can i get something else to say about gerald ford, this man who's been out of public eye for such a long time. the interesting what did is to try to find this man, chevy chase, who as an actor 40 years ago on the very first episodes of saturday night live portrayed the president as a bumbler. he would open the show by coming in, stumbling over the desk, falling over and so on creating a humorous routine. routine. typically when you want to find a celebrity you call up an agency or a lawyer or publicity person of some kind and takes days or weeks to set up an interview. but when you're working for the wire service, speed is of the essence. i looked into a dossier file, a company specializes in gathering information about people. i looked at his name. i couldn't find them but i found a name for a number for his wife. i called up that number and i said i would like to reach chevy

chase. here's what i'm doing. she said i'm not mrs. chase. i'm actually his daughter. he's with me right now but we are on the top of a mountain in colorado. we are skiing so you will call you back would get to the bottom of the mountain. 30 minutes later the phone right, it's chevy chase. you give me an interview about how he met gerald ford and spent time together, what a gracious than the former president was comments on. i run the article and that eating the phone rings again. chevy chase calls again and he says listen, i was thinking about this. how the hell did you get my daughter's cell phone number? phinney said the following, he said look, i'm just some guy who made fun of gerald ford in 1976 and i prefer to be left alone, really. at that point i realized celebrities, politicians, sports heroes, ordinary people, everyone are in the basis, data brokers collect, companies collect and so on and she cannot be exempt very easily.

so i thought of an interesting way to explore this was a world of las vegas. the reason for this is several fold. firstly because of course las vegas had huge amount of money. the other reason why las vegas is interesting is because very many public records are gathered there. public records are the base of what data brokers use about people. they gather wedding documents, birth, death and other documents. more people are married in vegas than anywhere else. you can think of elvis presley and many of the people over time who have been married in las vegas. those documents become public record that anyone can look up and find the address and other details for people. there's more surveillance cameras in private spaces in las vegas than other places, and some of the most sophisticated loyalty programs in terms of gathering data on customers that exist now and will go into that

in a little bit of time. also biggest is that a commonplace around the world. just this summer i was traveling in istanbul and others wandered through the streets and came across an unusual site. there was a man, a woman in full dress covered from head to foot in traditional muslim style, and there was a man in a t-shirt that said nevada las vegas. so even in the different parts, all different cultures las vegas is an emblematic line of this wild world. i wanted to explore the. my way to get into that was to look at caesars in caesars palace, the flagship property of the world's biggest casino company. the man behind caesar's palace is the seo today, isn't special interesting figure in history of casino bosses. if you think of bugsy siegel and some of the others you may have seen in movies, lefty rosenthal portrayed by robert deniro in casino, this is a different breed nowadays.

kerry is someone who got his degree at mit and became a junior professor at harvard business school. at harvard business school, typically the work four days a week. on the fifth day you're allowed to be a consultant to outside companies. he drew attention for the following issue, which is this article calling putting profit changed work are translated that means how to get someone to be a loyal customer over time? if you come to my pizzeria today and you buy one slice of pizza, that's worth 1 dollar or two to me. if i knew judy, year after year of a lifetime that may be worth seven or $8000. lifetime revenue stream of loyalty to him $8000, a cadillac owner, $330,000, and the corporate purchaser of aircraft billions of dollars. how do we do this in the casino world. the problem is the games are in essence exactly the same. the odds are the same each

place. i can play craps or slot machine or the roulette wheel in any of the seven casinos. some have singing gondoliers and dancing found another things. the properties will be different but his concept was to try to build a program that was going to keep you coming back by knowing more about you by gathering more data about you. back in the olden days, in the twilight zone is the only place where a machine could have done anything about you. there's a 1960s episode called the fever in which a player called the franklin is called by the slot machine and he becomes obsessed and the slot machine called out his name, franklin, franklin. but in today's world the slot machine often does wr and knows a huge amount of information about you. i wanted to step back and take the fish of modern will to programs which are at the heart of a lot of consumer data collection in today's world.

the image in the background, you see loyalty stamps from, green stamps which and decades before were given out when you would buy things at the supermarket and you might get 100 steps if you want $100 worth of groceries. in a certain amount of time you'youhave enough to get a toar another price. the problem with those programs was a good know you are until the day you showed up and put down your coupon book and said i'd like my toaster. but the company wanted to know more, who are my valuable fellow customers amongst you all and how do i cater to best? a modern-day airline loyalty program. american airlines in 1981 introduces the modern loyalty program. they tried to track passengers to figure out there's john smith is going every week to london, let's make them special offers so applies only us rather than other airlines.

the problem is people using different phone numbers and different addresses. they weren't able to properly track people to figure who their best customers were. what they decided, let us offer some reward, points that can be translated to free flights subcontract our best customers. from this idea spread very rapidly almost instantly after american airlines do this, other airlines followed, and then it spread to hotels, rental cars and other companies. in the casino context, this is the world you know existed with the slot machines. it's interesting how the evolution of brains into slot machines but in the traditional old stuff was just a lover, things were spinning inside. they did know anything. it wasn't an intelligent machine. then came along the sky, don baker, who is a casino entrepreneur, still living in las vegas today. he is standing in front of some of his current innovations.

what he realized one christmas was he was opening a present for his children -- he was packing some presents for children and amongst them was this speak and spell game which is a primitive early electronic game where you would see a word and spell it out are here and be able to spell it and so. he was startled this game was a 50 or $60 but it was at this kid at the time. he had been trying to build brains that attract people on the slot machine but you have to build for each different machine, so there's a lot of hardware to be installed and it's quite expensive. >> can i have your attention, please? testing is included. please disregard. the testing has been concluded. thank you and sorry for any inconvenience.

>> so john akers was opening, was packing presents as i mentioned and he became fascinated. how can you do this so cheaper goods it's costing three or $400 to build a machine on the side of slot machine. he got out a screwdriver. he opened up the back of this and is quite inspired by what he saw. his children did end up getting one last gift that your buddy up innovate this modern system of intelligence were each slot machine is able to track who is doing what gambling. it was a system today when you ride a casino you'll step up to the counter, register your name, address, other personal details about you. again this is a voluntary thing but if you don't want to join the older programs you don't have to but if you want the freebies that come with it, the free meals, the fragrance, of the benefits, then you will join the program. the overwhelming bulk of people at caesars and other casinos do choose to join the loyalty program. then wherever you go you're

going to stick your card into the machine or hand it to the person to if you go to the restaurant to hand him the card and you may save a dollar or two. if you buy tickets because he jerry seinfeld doing stand up comedy at caesars palace you and in the cart and go register all of these purchases. so they will know everything you do in the public space at caesars if you're using the card. the tracking electronically extends behind the scenes as well. here are two employees working in casino in cincinnati. but they come in and swipe their cards and maybe swiping at other stations. they are following in the front of the room and in the back of the house as well. the reason you want to join the program as i mentioned is that you want better service or better goods and others are getting. here's a picture of the famous but i didn't caesars palace in las vegas. this is a busy holiday weekend, as you can see there's quite a

long line to get the all-you-can-eat buffett. if you joined the loyalty program engine moved up in the theater, you would be able to go to this one, the seven stars elite line to get services. that's why people join these programs. when you do join though they will know an incredible amount of intimate detail at the time, the very instant you are playing. here's an example of what a casino manager will know as you are playing. he will have on his cell phone exact details and he will walk up to you. this is, for example, location. this slot machine, player john smith is playing right now. here's his level, th the tv is n the loyalty program. he is a seven star member which is top level, a very important client, to go say hello to.

he now has 90,000-point which is just a few shy of the time as being at the very top level of the next year as well. dominant property is north kansas city. he typically spends $212 per night, and theoretically today he should've lost $145 because he spent $1450 in the machine which keeps about 10% on average and thus he should lose 145. he has lost $59 today. he's having a pretty good night giving the statistical odds. the amount of information the casino hosts or manager knows is even more extensive. here's the second screen. here's the last time he did visit up here. the less traditional lost five in a $63 but he had a poor evening. he lost $772. this is all determined by the statistical odds of what the slot machine keeping 10% of every gamble since.

so knowing all the incredible amount of information allows the host to step up and say good evening, mr. chose the very glad you were here. want to welcome you. they talk a little bit. interestingly when i wandered around with the manager often they were not, players were not completely clear about how much weight they were losing. they would say i'm down about a hundred, 150. the guy was actually down 500. they didn't exactly know. the other thing could happen is taken see this guy is down 772 the last time. he should have lost that much. remember in the previous screen as should he typically plays about $200. so you may come up to him and say, i'd like to give you a free steak dinner. is an tickets are here's tickets to the comedy show tonight so this person feels very good about the experience despite having had an especially poor evening at the gambling table. what else does the casino? they know what drinks customers

prefer. drinks are not always sure investment in las vegas. this is a special occasion. there are some things the casino does not know and so as i mentioned the casinos pretty much what's happening in the public spaces but it does not know in the private spaces. here's an actual door that i photographed during my research in las vegas. this is what it says. a little hard to see but i will read it to you. the dress code for this party is naked. if you don't like to party naked, please check out the parties upstairs. thank you. this is the kind of activity, a while activity of vegas that is indeed staying in vegas. it's not useful for the casinos marketing purposes. but, of course, there is video surveillance and vast tracts of the casino. a typical large casino may have 3000 cameras, some have even 4000 or 5000. they are monitoring not only the

customers who are coming but also the back of the house as i mentioned. the reason for that is there's lots of opportunity for self-enrichment. you could take a few chips if you worked in the casino if you are counting the money wrong. you could have some steaks commencing. you could not charge for drinks and hope your trip -- your chips would increase. there's lots of surveillance on both sides of the camera. even if you 3000 cameras though you don't have 3000 people watching them. you have a room like this. this is the las vegas strip security guard, one of the five or six to put on duty. they have vast space of monitors that show different points of the casino. ulysse varies card tables, there is always. for example, here's some entrance points. people come and going down hallways and so on. and in many cases like a lot of the technology, it can be very good or it can be negative depend on how you use it. so, for example, if you gone down, playing a slot machine,

left her hand back there, you can exactly which missing you are sitting at, maybe had a trick or two, clouding her experience. they can go back on the tape, followed that, may be some picked up the bag. they can follow the person and then recover the bag for you. or if you left your ipod or any of the devices, whatever. oftentimes this kind of surveillance could be used for good but it can also be used for different kinds of purposes beyond casinos. it's also interesting how widespread a lot of this technology has become worldwide. so, for example, this is in sicily. you see a. there's a sign that says we are watching you. video surveillance and there's a camera looking this way and that way. there's not example of that. this is a church also in sicily anand this has here are the ares under video surveillance. this could be great because it allows the church to be open at different hours without someone being there all the time but if they read to use this technology

to say you have not been coming to church let me come with and tracking your behavior, that might be more intrusive. technology can be used in different ways. technology is not new. this was used by an agent tirade also in sicily. to use the prisoners into this cave and at the very top the emperor would put his ear behind this little outlet and the acoustics were such that he could do the talking of the prisoners. i wanted to take you little into the data mine to explain what goes on the details that a typical dossier or typical commercial folder about someone might look like. this is one example. you see things such as genealogy

and family records, court records, classified information, work information, photos, home information, telephone, e-mails and professional licenses. all of this is put into a commercial dossier. you can get access to these on numerous websites that our people look up sites, for example, and their are more sophisticated ones that lawyers look for when they're looking for people. there's all sorts of variants of this. at the same time for other companies that specialize in gathering information that would be seem to be more intimate or maybe more troublesome to some people. i want to explain to some of the lists i've come across. this is a list of baby boomers with erectile dysfunction. this list advertises there is 1.7 million in suffer from this which they sell for $80 per thousand i came across this was

at a convention of data brokers at the direct marketing association's annual convention which is held in las vegas. i was quite surprised to find this document and i said how is it you have a list like this? these men volunteer this information to us. i said that's quite interesting. would it be possible for me to buy 100 or even 1000 names? because i was thinking i find hard avoid that even one man would volunteer let alone 1.8 million, or whatever the number was. what i proposed the following e-mail or letter i would write to the. i would say understand you're on this list. i wanted to ask you whether you've received commercial offers digital and useful? did you know you're on this mailing list? they said no, no, no. if you send a letter like that would be an immoral use of our data. [laughter] this is the kind of example that many data brokers our menu do in our personal data themselves quite secretive about how they handle data.

now, the erectile dysfunction is one of many different categories this company has. they have hypertension and incompetence and insomnia and schizophrenia and so on and so on. if you want to buy a list of women who are schizophrenic or men who are such and such, you can buy this list. you may think to yourself, this sounds like it's kind of after. they be mainstream companies don't deal in the kind of data. they deal in different data. according to the website of this company, these are some of the clients are procter & gamble, toyota, and so on and so on. kind of the pillars of the american economy. is widespread that this candidate it could be used throughout the economy. data like this could be used in ways that could be leading to embarrassment or other kind of

our. this is a subsection of what talk about the business criminal data and humiliation. if you visit vegas today one of the new sites that have opened in recent years is the museum of the mob which separates the rich criminal history that las vegas has but it's quite an interesting museum. if you go to vegas it's certainly worthwhile to visit. this is how it begins. there is a room where you can line up and pretend to be on the criminal lineup. it says one of you has a long rap sheet. people think it's hilarious. relatives and friends are taking photos. there's a lot of laughter when you go into that room. it's not so funny when this actually happens in real life. editable two-year to maybe 12 or 13 or 14 million americans who are arrested, only some of whom face criminal charges. in recent years some entrepreneur's have found a business or maybe business of publicizing these mugshots.

mugshots of course our public record documents but for most people the overwhelming number of people these mugshots were in court records and so on, hidden away from the general public. if you were a celebrity might be different. one chapter in my book in "what stays in vegas" talks about the mugshots business. looks at a company called busted a mugshots.com. his innovation was to print up a little magazine, busted in austin in texas and you put funny photos of people and sell it at convenience stores and gas stations. after he got into this business even expanded onto the internet and start putting up people's photos on the internet. the little twist of this company and some of its rival companies was they would -- would you look up a site, you'd often find, look up john smith and because there's not much about you on the internet, this mug shot

would. this one woman is a citizen in south florida. one day friend called her and said why did you join me for lunch which she said i've already eaten. all be glad to join you to keep you company. when she arrived she ordered a small portion of lentils just to have something. when the bill came the owner charged or a large portion and they got introduced you to choose that i only ordered the small and. he said but it brought you the large one. she refused to pay the difference which is $3.68. should lay down exactly on the table. she left the restaurant at the onus of divvied up exact about i'm going to call the police. he called the police and the police arrested her and took her to jail where she spent four or five hours. the case was ultimately dropped. again it was only $3.68. years past, it was a forgotten episode. she was looking for a job and someone said, called her up and said, a friend, have you looked

at the name recently on the internet? we look up your name that old mugshots of use coming up. so busted mugshots have been posting it, a million other pictures. the original business concept of these mugshots companies was go when you're horrified i is better my chances to get a job, you can click the photo and we have a convenient the of $100 for which you can then remove this photo. in terms of classic -- it was allowed under the law although the anna lawsuits and legal disputes about it. it was a case where the law was hazy as to which you can do. it wasn't like that and since they never said unless you do this, unless you pay is now $100 we're putting up the photo. they put up the phone and later if you're horrified offer to you the chance to take it down. some interesting things about this company that includes the man behind the. you wonder what kind of person would go into this business?

there's a whole chapter about the man who is behind it. here he is. just six mugshots which i was able to unearth from police files myself. he lived a bit of an unruly youth. he was his high school drug dealer and have a few other scrapes of the law. his father was a judge, interestingly, and he was a smart guy who went to various financial businesses after college, but always found them a bit dull and eventually he ended up in the mugshots business. here's what kyle prall looks like today living in austin, texas. there some other variants of this kind of business. here's another one called my ex.com. you can put photos of your former girlfriend or former boyfriend, and the photos can be all different natures. they can be compromising the naked photos, whatever you want.

they also have this convenient key, for $499 if your photo is up there they will remove it. others have taken this concept of the take down the and removed it. as i mentioned, a lot of people look up companies have emerged in recent years. here's one that's been successful, thanks to clever marketing and successful marketing campaigns. that's instant checkmate.com. you look up a name. in some cases a mugshots that was coming up but often you generate these google ads. it will save look at this first project of the arrest record and so on. they really have it up if you're go to these sites. if you could instant checkmate what they say. they said please use caution when conducting a search to ensure all information entered is exactly. putting the truth can be shocking so please be cautious when using this tool. they're having it up, i will pay $20 to see this shocking information or subscriber

whatever. this is one of holsters of companies that makes public information from dawsey whether it's where you live and your phone number or whether there's a criminal record and so on. like many copies this company in particular was not a special forthcoming about who was behind it and the staff and so on. the objective of what stays in vegas, the book, was to shine some light on these companies. i was looking in particular for a woman that appeared in this company's press releases quite often. and restatements of blog postings from a woman called kristen bright. when i called her up, typically those that choose to hear or we've never seen her, we don't know. i would e-mail her. over a period of weeks and saw nothing happened. so i began to suspect there was something odd about kristen bright. so begin the search for a mystery woman. i became convinced over time that perhaps this woman was not a real person but just a fictitious creation.

i did find one clue that was interesting it turned out to be whole chapter in the book. there was a yelp page with a single picture of this woman the size of a thumbnail and i thought, i as is on the bottom hello, i'm glad i work at this company and i love answering customer the, blah, blah, blah. i could say are you kristen bright? d. work for this company or is this some kind of fictitious person that has been created. from that little photo i was able to find, it was a headshot of a woman. from that i found on google image search and a picture that showed a woman in a bikini and from that i found other photos. this woman had a fake certainly. it wasn't her real name. it was an unusual last name. by digging around increased documents i was ultimate able to find, there was another webpage that said i'm married to a guy named tom. there is a tom and ann.

i kept looking diverse documents. ultimately, i came across this bankruptcy petition that had a sliver of this fake a last name related to a word in the document. this is again using databases, and look at the bankruptcy petition i saw that she had a big debt or some kind of debt at victoria's secret. a lot of the photos had negligent or whatever, home photos, just a family outing to summer kind of like erotic style photographs. i thought this victoria's secret debt has piqued my interest, and then i looked more into the document and to give clues as to where this couple lived, where she worked and so. i was able to ultimately tracked her down. this is just an episode from a thumbnail sized photo how much information i was able to learn. interesting side story about how this woman, was a legitimate woman not involved in any modeling or anything, how she came to post photos on the

internet and because her conversation is being recorded i will let you read in the book rather than tell it out loud because the are some r-rated episodes. finally, when i called them up i wanted to say do you work for this company? what can you tell me? the husband answered the phone and here's what he said. he said, back before 10 years ago when you put pictures on internet there was total anonymity, but now it's not like that. you can see put up a picture on the internet and you get a guy from harvard calling up on your cell phone. that's sort of the moral of like the littlest smallest piece of information can lead to a lot of stuff. this incident is what ann looks like today. but as i said a little piece of information like a mosaic is hard to see anything from. yogive you have fewer pieces ana few more pieces and more, over time the full picture comes into view. that's the importance of why you should give thought to how you share your data. ultimately, i'm not one who says you must do this and you must

follow these prescriptions. i'm advocating people use thought to this world of data collection that now exists and then share the data accordingly. different people will have different tastes and how it all works but i encourage you to look into how it all works before you decide. now, here's a cartoon that sums up some of the sentiments. it says, your call may be monitored. your internet searches may be recorded. your e-mail may be scanned. your whereabouts may be tracked. your credit card purchases may be analyzed and your most intimate personal details may be a cumulative in order to better serve you. this seems like an amusing cartoon but that summer again on the same trip when i was in istanbul i saw the following counter at turkish airlines. here you see the agent is behind the desk. there's a customer and design your and this thing off to the side right here. if you look at that more

closely, that's a recording device. when you're speaking is recording the conversation and the sign above the desk says indeed just like in the khartoum government order to improve our quality of service, your conversations are being recorded. so the point of this is that it's not just something, to our country in the united states. it's something increasingly common throughout the world that data is being gathered. again, to be done in a way that is great for service and appealing to customers because they get the parts they want or can be done ways they cause embarrassment our difficulties for people down the line. one question to think about is behind this fog of commerce that we're engaged in now, how do you know what companies do with your data? think about this. here's the site of lincoln's gettysburg address. it is 272 words and a lot of it remained cached that it echoes with the time as we know it and remember it today. here by contrast is how

lincoln's gettysburg address looks again without zinch.com privacy policy. 6002 under 69 words. if you want to find what this company does with your data, it takes a lot of reading. there are sections you can go to more quickly. to the achingly the data elsewhere and combined with which are given in? do they sell it to other people? these are questions you should be thinking about when you look at personal data. after the casino example, one interesting thing about the world of casinos is a hold their data very carefully and tightly because it's a valid asset to them. they do not share it beyond the walls of caesar's, for example. they don't want competitors to know what the customers are doing. if you go and join the program you know, they're keeping it. do i trust this company? did you can join the program. a lot of our transactions today is obscure. who is gathering, what happens

over time. i think something pretty straightforward and easy to do that is not yet been done is something like a nutrition label for personal information. you could quickly said we have, we do share data with outside company to we get activated. we even say something simple like facebook, look, we are glad you love our service. of course, as you we are a free service and in order to make money we gather information about you to target information, target advertising as best we can. companies today often are quite obscure and opaque with what they do with their data. something like this would be a straightforward way to get more insight for outsiders. there's a little bit more of this in financial statement if you receive a report from a credit card company. they may say what they do. it's a little more clear thanks to regulation. my conclusions are that personal

data lives forever. any information you give up now never disappears in essence. so it may have been in years past he told a story give her something and that was it, but now the data is added to multiple files, often a cumulative by massive data broker comes that you don't know about. for companies, personal data does not always portray or predict reality. by this i mean there's a lot of wrong data about us out of there. one of the big data brokers last year had an initiative called about the data.com, and you can look up what information they have about you as a consumer, your consumer profile. if you're interested go there, you put yourself security number and some other information but it doesn't cost anything and then you say whether the list being married or not come with you like sports or not. what you think you are as a

consume the people i talk to it often got the details wrong. give up to two unless it has been one. people interested or not interest in hunting are listed as gun buffs and so. a conservative things wrong with a lot of data that is correct. >> another issue i think will come into the years to go out of business are open but what they do in data and give good value in return will prosper. to some exten extent that's theo model i've been talking about. we gather a lot of data can we know a lot about you but we're giving you all these benefits and we are pretty clear, maybe not all the individual mechanics of that works, but we are clear about the equation. that's the model worth emulating and other aspects of the economy. in the opposite event, businesses that are dishonest about personal data practices will one day end up in ruin. you can trick people to extract data and information, but over

time if there is a data breach a something happens, there may be stuff that will lead to damages for corporations that have all this information that were not open about how they gather the information and what they do with it. i think that's something worth keeping in mind. that was the general outline of the book. my book again is an attempt to bring to life narrative examples of stores that were of personal data, and ultimate with a message of asides yourself competing for but which and then decide. if you do want to take more strenuous protections for yourself, there's an appendix this a is you can do this and this. let's compare. and withou with that i'm glad tr any questions. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. [inaudible] >> technology will change. there will always be ways to get

data has been put up online and it has and always be ways to discover more data. could you talk more about how data is used by different organizations, by governments, versus corporations versus how much information individual operating about themselves online? >> so should the onus be on individual or more broadly on of entities and found the use and so it is a very good question. the problem is that legislation and laws are often fall behind the quick advance of technology. we're here at a law school right now. me if you could go into the field and come up with new guidelines and regulations and standards that could guide us in the future, but right now to the situation we have i tried to encourage the consumer to empower themselves. but certainly there could be more provisions in law or standards that would help out in that regard. you think of issues such as use

of medical data, our current standard sufficient to protect our medical data given that there's such a wide sale of medical data that is unseen even if is on a anonymous basic or you could protected naturally to sexual orientation or religion or other sensitive information? these are things i think are worthy of consideration. my point is to want to tell the stories and given what we have now, you reading the book today or a month from now, the laws may take some years to change so i think if you're cautious with thoughtful with what you share with the data that may be to your advantage. or you may have a multi-varied approach. so, for example, we saw a few weeks ago the case in which jennifer lawrence's intimate photos and other celebrities were leaked from the cloud. if you're putting up images or documents into the cloud, you may have two different cloud

servers. it's eas easy to use it the othr might be unencrypted server which is more of a pain to take more of an effort but maybe that's we put the more intimate photos of financial documents and so on. so that's what i would say. any of the questions? please, over there. >> doing your research what surprised you the most about the data-gathering you saw? >> what surprised me the most, i think it wasn't any individual practice but it was a vast scale of the practice but as i pointed out, jimmy page and this little company and is, this vast array of differing sellers. one day i got a solicitation from the aclu with my new home address. site called them up and they said can you uncover dismissed you as how exactly get my current home address that recently changed? they dug it up and found out that a magazine that i have been

subscribing to sold it to them to then i called up one day out of many of which makes adult toys, we sell all this information. it's like from the magazine that is not for sensitive, just this vast amount of data that is sold because the aclu is saying, i magazine was paying 10 cents by selling my name. if you multiply that tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of customers, its revenue that is attractive to them. that's something i found especially interesting. >> i've always found if you want to get people to do something, that you wanted to you try to make it easy for them to do it. so you word describing scrolling through a policy of 6000 words, or then you had different websites where people want to join because others belong like facebook or something, and then

unraveling the choices and they are well done with the language that is completely excess bulk of people. even if they read it they don't know what they're agreeing to and what they are not agreeing to. so what do you think might we could do to make it easier for people to actually, you know, make intelligent choices? i feel like i am a reasonably intelligent consumer, but if you like it's all in my head. from a matter of time and also a matter of understanding what it means to share information in this way and not that way. >> this could be an amusing experiment for fordham law school together a classroom of students, hand out the same privacy policies that have everyone in triplicate and see what the answers, to be. like this aggregated or is it so complex and tangled that even people studying the law cannot exactly understand. have you done that experiment?

>> we had three groups, privacy experts, graduate students and former students, and then crowd workers, just internet person on the street. none of them agreed on what the terms meant. so the bottom line of the project. >> that's fascinating. it shows it is basically a fundamental failure if they want to be clear but if you wanted to up come if you confuse the faster it of people, maybe that's your goal. as i mentioned, there's nothing wrong with we collected data. we are glad you like it. here's the kind of data we gather and we also other data about you because were trying to say things. i don't think that so bad if you're on a. you could have an abbreviated nutrition facts, and the people care they can look at the abbreviated version and they

were there's a longer while diversion down below. as i mentioned credit cards and some financial statements, some of the mutual fund statements have simplified some aspect of what they do. these are models that can help clarify. i think that honesty should be rewarded by customers. i think there's a lot of customers frustrated by the deliberate thing the compass are doing. they are crying out for something simpler. your study you mentioned is in a sample of that. please come over here. [inaudible] i think it's the way to make you just get to the entrance i agree. because whatever you need to do, whether it's to buy something or whatever and you're just not going to read this stuff because first of all, you know that you will not understand it. and then i guess the purpose is exactly not to make it understandable so that people

just click. or maybe i am cynical, i don't know but i think it's the way it is -- it's like an insurance contract. insurance policy. sign even for a lawyer, insurance policy. do you understand this thing? i don't. >> you are right but i guess my point is it doesn't have to be that way. this whole data aggregation is part of great advancements that make our lives better in many aspects but it's like the car. without seatbelts, without airbag, bad things are happening related to injuries and death. so certain measures had to be taken to a security. a lot of great progress but the things we also need to look at. this is just a small aspect of privacy policy and what are they doing with the data. how a lot of the data aggregation allows for good

marketing and targeting of things that are great and all these systems, but decide impact potential of what happens with this massive aggregation of personal data is something i think we should think about. some of your graduates here may go on to bring these privacy policies for companies. a lot of the language is written in a way that it will say something like we care give you about your privacy and we follow the law and protecting your privacy. of course, they don't tell you that the law is weak in many aspects of it and makes pretty much -- they can do anything they want to we follow the law and putting for together. changed we still put a lot of fat, sugar or salt into it but you should have a choice as a consumer i'm not going to eat this or i will eat that one in limited qualities or whatever. is there any other comments or thoughts, different approaches to how -- please. >> who do you see as being the

kind of -- [inaudible] >> in each country it would be, might be the federal trade commission and the united states that would oversee the broad categories and they might say something like you have to say how you collect data, what you collect, what to do with information. do you share with affiliates? do you share with outside companies? i would be a number of categories that would be relatively digestible for some good not spent years studying the law understand. the companies would have to comply by giving a clear answer yes, we share it with outsiders, or no, or what the deal was. i don't think this is a revolutionary idea but it is straightforward and easy but has

not yet happened in most aspects of data gathering. please. >> i wanted to get out you really need to put your finger on the scales much more heavily? and basically at this point really say you need to ask people for information that you're going to use for marketing purposes, here it is, and that they don't need to provide, that it would be illegal to require people to do that to go to sort of a public website. you can be running these websites, wherever, but something along those lines that puts the burden on the company to basically say i'm asking you to do something that really is not intended to benefit you. is here to benefit me. it might benefit you in some, you know, some long-term way but let me try to explain it.

so when i go to click of one thing, the answer is no. and then they've got to sort of persuaded to say yes rather than clicking on one thing and having it say, you know, have it say yes. >> that's more of the european model where you can opt in rather than opt out. certainly there is more choice. you think about some of the new products emerging now for health and fitness where you would be wearing a device and so on. a lot of these, i just talked to an entrepreneur the other day who said look, if i make a little device that measures varies health attributes come if i sell the date i can make it more cheaply. but if i don't sell the data i'm at a disadvantage. it raises the question you could have one where you sell the data, a little cheaper. he was torn by this issue because he sees a lot of competitors that deal and the kind of health fitness category

sell the data without the customer having a say in it. i think there are mayors, special and stuff like that but why should the maker of health product that is measuring fairly intimate signs about your medical health be gathering data as a default? why should you be able to say -- they could ask for medical science, do you think this information would be useful? would you share it? many people probably would if it's phrased that way but you should have the choice. i agree with what you're saying but this debate is not taking place on a national scale in the way it should be. having more tales from what i call behind the data curtain is the way to do that. in any case i thank you all for coming out to the talk, and it's been nice talking to you. of blood and to any questions afterwards as well, so thank you again. [applause] >> booktv is on facebook. like a stick of publishing news, schedule updates, behind the scenes pictures and video.

author information and to talk directly to authors been on live programs. facebook.com/booktv. >> when you think about this it is interesting because people have very strong opinions about all sorts of things. gay marriage, climate change, nuclear policy decisions. without having any technical expertise in these areas. i have my strong view on american foreign policy, but what do i know about this? i took one course in religion back in 1983 when i was an undergraduate student in south korea, and the crusty old professor who taught us use the textbook from the 1960s, yeah? so what did i know about religion isn't half a century a