Big Data – Big Brother’s Appetite Grows Steadily

This post is also available in: עברית (Hebrew)

By Arie Egozi

“Big Brother” likes his information in large quantities, but neat so he won’t have any trouble seeing what is important. This is exactly the field of Big Data.

In most cases you can’t even realize how much information there is on you.

You go out to buy shoes, you fill gas at gas stations, you stand in line for security inspections at the airport. Someone is watching you and taking your picture. Someone is recording your every move and saves it on special computerized systems. Whenever you get service, in Israel or anywhere in the world, chances are you are being under constant surveillance. It started out as a means to prevent terror and crime. It went on to prevent theft in businesses, and then as a way to improve marketing methods. Thousands of electronic eyes and ears are watching you, and are getting more observant every passing month.

As in many other areas, the turn was after the 9/11 terror attack in the US, which gave the American government justification to limit the scope of privacy for the security of citizens, and many nations followed in its footsteps.

The reality that was created after the traumatic attack in New York saw the forming of systems that follow everything that moves. Whole cities covered with hundreds cameras. Public buildings are filled with them, not to mention airports. Now there are even sensitive microphones attached to cameras. The Chicago city police has already implemented 60 such systems in the city streets. The microphones were directed so that they could receive and recognize the sound of gunfire from two blocks away. Other cities are implementing such programs in many more places.

The experience from the field of counter crime and terror is now being applied to many other places. From the moment you enter an airport you are under surveillance by hundreds and even thousands of CCTV cameras. Every movement is being monitored by these cameras, every movement documented. Someone is watching in small and secured rooms, ready for anything out of the ordinary. Airports, which in the past used only a small number of cameras and only in key points, have implemented hundreds and thousands of new cameras. The same for public buildings and recently in private facilities as well. Next time you arrive at the terminal in Ben Gurion airport, look around you.

Security cameras have been a necessary item in many institutions for years. Some of them are just filming for security personnel to monitor different parts of a building or a secured facility. Others have also recorded the footage on video tapes which are then saved for months or years in secured locations. If anyone wants to recreate a certain event, the video must be fast forwarded or rewound, just like we used to do with our VCR. Quite the primitive method.

Nowadays the data is being saved on digital systems which offer an easier extraction. Tens or hundreds of cameras provide the material. Big Data systems are designed, among other things, to provide a complete picture of a certain area and point out anything unusual happening. Otherwise there’s no controlling the influx of data, visual or otherwise, which flows to any kind of control center.

But Big Data is not just for the streets of major cities or airports. The multitude of sensors being used today by ground, aerial, and maritime forces requires systems to “digest” the data in a timely manner and produce usable products.

Israel has many great achievements in this field, some classified, but the field is progressing globally, reaching new heights.