TWC: Medium: Understanding and Illuminating Non-Public Data Flows

TWC：媒介：理解和阐明非公开数据流

• 批准号: 1514509
• 负责人: Nicholas Weaver
• 金额: $ 120万
• 依托单位: International Computer Science Institute
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2020-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1514509&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: TWC; Medium; Understanding; Illuminating; Non

Our lives are surrounded by a constant web of data, picked up by a global network of unseen programs that gather, coalesce, combine, and merge every scrap of data they can acquire. These programs and companies operate out of public view, collecting and exchanging data for profit without clear public knowledge. This is a complex ecosystem, the original collectors of data are likely unaware of eventual uses, users of data may be unaware of the original source. This project seeks to illuminate this ecosystem through a series of experiments by attempting to measure and perturb unseen data pools by selectively adding or retrieving information. Additionally, this project focuses on creating traps and triggers, artificial data that future data providers might employ, enabling discovery of new collection and use of data. Finally, simply researching the phenomenon is insufficient: a final critical factor is education and outreach, empowering the public with an understanding of these otherwise unseen programs. The philosophy of this project is simple: If these data pools affect our lives, we must know what they are and what they do. The technical focus of this project involves perturbing the data systems and soundly measuring the results. Some data brokers provide user access, allowing the direct validation of inferences. The project also involves creating ?personas?, artificial identities designed to leave traces in data pools. If a data broker purchases and acts on this data, this creates a causal link between data source and data consumer, allowing attribution of data flows within the data ecosystem. Other portions of the project involve purchasing data directly from brokers, evaluating the potential damage that such brokers may entail, and deliberately seeding multimedia content which includes various levels of identifiable information to detect when data brokers begin scraping these multimedia sources.

我们的生活被一个持续不断的数据网络所包围，这些数据被一个由看不见的程序组成的全球网络所接收，这些程序收集、合并、组合和合并它们可以获得的每一个数据碎片。这些项目和公司在公众视野之外运作，在公众不知情的情况下收集和交换数据以获取利润。这是一个复杂的生态系统，数据的原始收集者可能不知道最终用途，数据的用户可能不知道原始来源。该项目试图通过一系列实验来阐明这个生态系统，尝试通过有选择地添加或检索信息来测量和扰乱看不见的数据池。此外，该项目的重点是创建陷阱和触发器，以及未来数据提供商可能使用的人工数据，从而能够发现新的数据收集和使用。最后，仅仅研究这一现象是不够的：最后一个关键因素是教育和宣传，使公众能够了解这些原本看不见的项目。这个项目的理念很简单：如果这些数据池影响我们的生活，我们必须知道它们是什么以及它们做什么。该项目的技术重点涉及扰乱数据系统并正确测量结果。一些数据代理提供用户访问权限，允许直接验证推论。该项目还涉及创建“角色”，即旨在在数据池中留下痕迹的人工身份。如果数据经纪人购买这些数据并对其采取行动，就会在数据源和数据消费者之间建立因果联系，从而允许对数据生态系统内的数据流进行归因。该项目的其他部分涉及直接从经纪人那里购买数据，评估此类经纪人可能造成的潜在损害，以及故意播种多媒体内容，其中包括各种级别的可识别信息，以检测数据经纪人何时开始抓取这些多媒体源。