The Watcher in My Hand: Reconstructing Big Data

Me Reflected in the Mirror, and the Shadow

Last night, I just messaged a friend saying, “How about camping this weekend?” Yet this morning, my Instagram feed is flooded with ads for the latest tents and camping gear. It’s like a magic mirror that sees right through my mind. This amazing convenience amazes us. But what if that mirror only reflects the image I want to see, while secretly recording everything about me and even planning my next moves?

Behind that convenience lies a chilling shadow, and it is here that our new story begins. We now stand inside the vast mirror room called ‘big data,’ questioning whether technology reflects us or traps us within its frame.

# Data, The Birth of New Power

We are the first generation to leave digital records from birth. From the morning alarm to the last video before sleep, every choice and action, even the time spent hesitating in front of a product, becomes data. These fragments, once meaningless and scattered, have become powerful resources in the hands of corporations and authorities to understand our tastes, relationships, and beliefs, and to predict the future.

This is not merely a marketing issue to sell products better. The monopoly of data creates a new form of power imbalance. The world divides into those who have information and those who do not, those who design algorithms and those who follow them. For this convenience, we may be mortgaging our most precious ‘autonomy’ and ‘freedom of choice.’

## The Evolution of Surveillance: Past, Present, and Future

Big data surveillance is already reconstructing our lives on multiple levels.

• Reconstruction of the Past (Political Manipulation):

  

  The 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Cambridge Analytica scandal opened this chapter. Tens of millions of data points were collected unknowingly through Facebook personality quiz apps. This data was used to create ‘customized’ political ads targeting voters’ psychological vulnerabilities. For example, ads stoking fear of immigrants were shown to those anxious about change, while messages emphasizing ‘strong leadership’ targeted authoritarian personalities. My past ’likes’ became weapons manipulating me, shaking the foundations of democracy.
• Current Control (Social Surveillance):

  

  China’s ‘Social Credit System’ is no longer science fiction. Imagine waking up and jaywalking; nearby CCTV instantly recognizes your face and deducts 5 points from your social credit score. With a low score, you are denied high-speed rail tickets you could book yesterday due to ‘insufficient credit.’ Conversely, buying government-recommended books or paying bills on time raises your score, lowering loan interest rates. Every citizen’s actions are scored, and those scores determine personal opportunities and freedoms. This dystopian reality evaluates lives by a single data metric and places society under massive control.
• Future Enslavement (Prediction and Discrimination):

  

  Big data now eyes our future. Consider Sarah, a recent graduate with a clean credit record and a job, yet rejected for a rental loan. She didn’t know why. In fact, the bank’s AI analyzed that some of her SNS friends had poor credit, she frequently ordered food late at night (considered an irregular lifestyle), and she often read stress-related articles. It classified her as a ‘high risk for future default.’ This prediction of an unrealized future became a ‘stigma’ blocking Sarah’s potential.

# Five Innovative Proposals to Reclaim Lost Sovereignty

The phrase “I have nothing to hide” no longer holds. Privacy is not a right for those with secrets but a fundamental human condition to think freely, make mistakes, and grow without interference. Instead of feeling powerless before the tide of massive technology, we need imaginative and proactive efforts to reclaim our rights. Here are five innovative ideas beyond conventional methods.

## 1. My Digital Twin: ‘Data Chameleon’

Instead of hiding data to avoid surveillance, how about disrupting it? ‘Data Chameleon’ is a service that generates plausible but false virtual data alongside your real activity patterns and streams them online. If you’re interested in camping, it simultaneously creates data about fishing, hiking, surfing, even knitting, preventing algorithms from pinpointing your true preferences. This makes tracking fundamentally difficult and acts as a shield protecting your ‘digital anonymity.’

## 2. Data as My Asset: ‘Personal Data Vault’ and Unions

This model stores my data not on corporate servers but in a blockchain-encrypted ‘Personal Data Vault,’ where ownership and control belong entirely to me. Companies must get my permission and pay fair compensation to use my data. Furthermore, individuals can form ‘Data Unions’ to negotiate with large corporations on equal footing. This revolutionary attempt shifts the data economy paradigm from corporate-centered to individual-centered.

## 3. Risk at a Glance: ‘Data Nutrition Label’

Just as we check nutrition labels on food, all apps and services should be required to display a ‘Data Nutrition Label.’ This label shows what personal data is collected (items collected), how it is used (purpose), how long it is stored (retention period), and whether it is shared with third parties (sharing risk), using easy-to-understand icons and ratings. This empowers us to make informed choices about which services to use.

## 4. Tax to Prevent Data Monopoly: ‘Data Retention Tax’

Data is called the ‘oil of the 21st century.’ Like taxing resource monopolies, this proposal imposes a ‘Data Retention Tax’ on companies holding personal data beyond a certain scale. This reduces incentives for indiscriminate data collection and permanent storage, encouraging the ‘data minimization principle’ to be naturally realized through market logic.

## 5. Developers’ Ethical Pledge: ‘Digital Hippocratic Oath’

Since laws and regulations struggle to keep pace with technological advances, the ethical awareness of developers is crucial. Like doctors taking the Hippocratic Oath, data scientists and developers would pledge, “I will not use my technology to infringe on human autonomy or reinforce discrimination,” making this the standard of professional ethics. This social movement could bring fundamental change from within technology itself.

# Conclusion: Becoming Owners Who Never Stop Questioning

Big data and AI are powerful tools given to humanity, but they are neither inherently good nor evil. What matters is the social consensus on the values and philosophy guiding their development and use.

Whether the smartphone in my hand remains a convenient ‘mirror’ reflecting me or becomes a ‘watcher’ defining and controlling me depends on our choices. The moment we stop questioning technological progress, we step down from the position of owners and become slaves. Constantly questioning values beyond convenience and imagining and demanding better technological directions is the only way to not lose ourselves before the giant mirror called big data.