• Agenda
  • Initiatives
  • Reports
  • Events
  • About
    • Our Mission
    • Leadership and Governance
    • Our Members and Partners
    • Communities
    • History
    • Klaus Schwab
    • Media
    • Contact Us
    • Careers
    • World Economic Forum USA
    • Privacy and Terms of Use
  • EN ES FR 日本語 中文
  • Login to TopLink

We use cookies to improve your experience on our website. By using our website you consent to all cookies in accordance with our updated Cookie Notice.

I accept
    Hamburger
  • World Economic Forum Logo
  • Agenda
  • Initiatives
  • Reports
  • Events
  • About
  • TopLink
  • Search Cancel

Home Page

<Previous Next>
  • Introduction
  • Executive Summaries
  • Global Shifts
    • Stefanie Babst, NATO – Rethinking Our Approach to Global Security
    • Jeremy Bentham, Royal Dutch Shell Plc – Reframing the Climate Change Debate
    • Wayne Best, Visa Inc – Demographics and Demand
    • Jean-Claude Burgelman, European Commission – A “New Deal” on Green Growth
    • Jakkie Cilliers, Institute for Security Studies – Reclaiming Legitimacy in Global Governance
    • Thomas E. Cremins, NASA – A New Space Age
    • Kristel Van der Elst, The Global Foresight Group – Rethinking Ageing
    • Tina Fordham, Citigroup – Vox Populi Risk
    • Julius Gatune, African Centre for Economic Transformation – Rethinking the Informal Economy
    • Jerome Glenn, The Millennium Project – The Age of Conscious-Technology
    • Derrick Gosselin, SCK.CEN – Predictive Analytics
    • Stefan Hajkowicz, CSIRO – The Potential of the Creative Economy
    • Kathleen Hicks, CSIS – New Security Challenges Posed by Megacities
    • Claudia Juech, The Rockefeller Foundation – Economic Opportunities in the 21st Century
    • Katell Le Goulven, UNICEF – Agile Development
    • Chris Luebkeman, Arup Group Ltd – Ambient Technology in Cities
    • Marios Maratheftis, Standard Chartered Bank – Shifting Geo-Economic Power
    • Daizo Motoyoshi, LIXIL Group Corporation – Revival of Japan
    • Herbert Oberhänsli, Nestlé SA – Rethinking Freshwater
    • Seongwon Park, STEPI – The Rising Appeal of a De-Growth Future
    • Rafael Ramírez, University of Oxford – The Possible Future of the Economics Profession
    • Rogerio Rizzi de Oliveira, Hewlett-Packard Company – Improving the Quality of Life in Megacities
    • Nouriel Roubini, New York University – The Third Industrial Revolution
    • Francisco Sagasti, FORO Nacional Internacional – The Changing Nature of Livelihoods
    • Trudpert Schelb, Siemens AG – The Next Stage of Individualization
    • Peter Schwartz, Salesforce – Fundamental Technological Progress Driving Economic Growth
    • Angela Wilkinson, OECD – Progressing Well-Being through Inclusive Growth
    • Jill Wong, Singapore Government – The Impact of Automation on Jobs and Society
  • Videos
  • Acknowledgements
  • Browse by Topic
    • Issues
      • Ageing
      • Cities and Urbanization
      • Economics Growth and Development
      • Employment and Entrepreneurship
      • Environment and Sustainability
      • Science and Technology
      • Security and Governance
    • Industries
      • Aviation and Travel
      • Electronics
      • Engineering and Construction
      • Global Health and Healthcare
      • Infrastructure
      • IT Software and Services
      • Media Entertainment and Information
      • Oil and Gas
      • Retail Consumer Goods and Lifestyle
      • Telecommunications
Global Strategic Foresight Community Home Previous Next
  • Report Home
  • Introduction
  • Executive Summaries
  • Global Shifts
    • Stefanie Babst, NATO – Rethinking Our Approach to Global Security
    • Jeremy Bentham, Royal Dutch Shell Plc – Reframing the Climate Change Debate
    • Wayne Best, Visa Inc – Demographics and Demand
    • Jean-Claude Burgelman, European Commission – A “New Deal” on Green Growth
    • Jakkie Cilliers, Institute for Security Studies – Reclaiming Legitimacy in Global Governance
    • Thomas E. Cremins, NASA – A New Space Age
    • Kristel Van der Elst, The Global Foresight Group – Rethinking Ageing
    • Tina Fordham, Citigroup – Vox Populi Risk
    • Julius Gatune, African Centre for Economic Transformation – Rethinking the Informal Economy
    • Jerome Glenn, The Millennium Project – The Age of Conscious-Technology
    • Derrick Gosselin, SCK.CEN – Predictive Analytics
    • Stefan Hajkowicz, CSIRO – The Potential of the Creative Economy
    • Kathleen Hicks, CSIS – New Security Challenges Posed by Megacities
    • Claudia Juech, The Rockefeller Foundation – Economic Opportunities in the 21st Century
    • Katell Le Goulven, UNICEF – Agile Development
    • Chris Luebkeman, Arup Group Ltd – Ambient Technology in Cities
    • Marios Maratheftis, Standard Chartered Bank – Shifting Geo-Economic Power
    • Daizo Motoyoshi, LIXIL Group Corporation – Revival of Japan
    • Herbert Oberhänsli, Nestlé SA – Rethinking Freshwater
    • Seongwon Park, STEPI – The Rising Appeal of a De-Growth Future
    • Rafael Ramírez, University of Oxford – The Possible Future of the Economics Profession
    • Rogerio Rizzi de Oliveira, Hewlett-Packard Company – Improving the Quality of Life in Megacities
    • Nouriel Roubini, New York University – The Third Industrial Revolution
    • Francisco Sagasti, FORO Nacional Internacional – The Changing Nature of Livelihoods
    • Trudpert Schelb, Siemens AG – The Next Stage of Individualization
    • Peter Schwartz, Salesforce – Fundamental Technological Progress Driving Economic Growth
    • Angela Wilkinson, OECD – Progressing Well-Being through Inclusive Growth
    • Jill Wong, Singapore Government – The Impact of Automation on Jobs and Society
  • Videos
  • Acknowledgements
  • Browse by Topic
    • Issues
      • Ageing
      • Cities and Urbanization
      • Economics Growth and Development
      • Employment and Entrepreneurship
      • Environment and Sustainability
      • Science and Technology
      • Security and Governance
    • Industries
      • Aviation and Travel
      • Electronics
      • Engineering and Construction
      • Global Health and Healthcare
      • Infrastructure
      • IT Software and Services
      • Media Entertainment and Information
      • Oil and Gas
      • Retail Consumer Goods and Lifestyle
      • Telecommunications
  • IT Software and Services
  • Science and Technology
  • Security and Governance


Predictive Analytics
The Impact of Big Data on Security, Intelligence and Democratic Rights

Derrick Gosselin, SCK.CEN

 

Our growing ability to generate, store and analyse data will profoundly affect society and our interaction with institutions, governments and companies in the decades to come. Predictive analytics, the capacity to make predictions based on analysing patterns of personal behaviour, will become more sophisticated – including in realms such as fighting crime and preventing terrorism. We will have fast-expanding capacity for non-transparent intelligence collection and decision-making about people or groups based on unrevealed behaviour. However, predictive analytics is all about correlation and interpretation, not causality and knowledge; it therefore raises fundamental moral and ethical questions related to privacy and the presumption of innocence. Can we balance the benefits of predictive analytics with the democratic control needed to secure personal integrity?

 


Share

Author

12---Gosselin

 

Derrick Gosselin

Chairman of the Board of Governors, SCK.CEN

Author

12---Gosselin

 

Derrick Gosselin

Chairman of the Board of Governors, SCK.CEN

Disclaimer

All opinions expressed herein are those of the authors. The World Economic Forum provides an independent and impartial platform dedicated to generating debate around the key topics that shape global, regional and industry agendas.

Disclaimer

All opinions expressed herein are those of the authors. The World Economic Forum provides an independent and impartial platform dedicated to generating debate around the key topics that shape global, regional and industry agendas.

Highlight

Tweet
Predictive analytics could make the world a safer place if we minimize misuse

Highlight

Tweet
Predictive analytics could make the world a safer place if we minimize misuse
The ways in which “big data” is revolutionizing business are much discussed. However, less appreciated are the possible implications for security and intelligence. In future, it may become possible to confidently predict criminal or terrorist activity by combining observations from sources such as social media activity, internet searches, shopping habits and smartphone location. How can we balance society’s interest in greater safety with the risks this poses to privacy, misuse and the human right to be presumed innocent?

We are generating more and more data, from our smartphones, appliances, satellites, terminals, cameras and a range of other sensors on vehicles and machinery. Anything we do online can be traced, stored and analysed. People are increasingly willing to give up private information, linked to their real-life identities, in exchange for faster or better services. 

At the same time, computing processing power to run statistical algorithms on that data is becoming both more powerful and cheaper. A June 2014 survey by Gartner found that 73% of the surveyed organizations had already invested or planned to invest in the next two years in predictive analytics systems, to capture and analyse data in order to make better decisions.9

Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of statistical techniques from modelling, machine learning and data mining that analyse current and historical facts to make predictions about future, or otherwise unknown, events. Everyday examples of current uses of predictive analytics include electricity providers anticipating peaks in demand, credit scores reflecting probabilities that given individuals will default on debts, and companies profiling customers to target offers they are predicted to be likely to buy.

Increasingly, it will become possible to analyse more and more data from diverse sources: social media postings reveal who we are interacting with; credit card or e-cash purchases reveal what we are purchasing; internet searches reveal what we are thinking about; our mobile phone locations reveal where we are and in which direction we are heading; while the movies and TV programmes we stream reveal our preferences in such broad areas as love, violence, travel, culture and sport.

Predictive analytics could increasingly be used in a range of fields, such as parole boards evaluating which inmates are most likely to reoffend; the military predicting which soldiers will be able to handle life in the special forces; life insurance providers predicting when individuals will die; or governments tracking the spread of pandemics in real time to better prepare healthcare facilities and to track the migration of people to prepare infrastructure. 

A specific domain of application of predictive analytics emerging today is its use to anticipate security threats and criminal behaviour. Several police forces already analyse Twitter and text messages as part of their activities to anticipate criminality and use “predictive policing” algorithms to decide where officers should patrol by analysing what areas of a city typically see what kinds of crime at what time of day. 

In 2013, it was revealed how much information from online communications is collected by intelligence agencies such as the US National Security Agency for purposes such as attempting to predict terrorist activity. Sir David Omand argues that social media intelligence, referred to as SOCMINT, should become a full member of the intelligence and law enforcement family. The capacity of predictive analytics to prevent acts of crime and terrorism will likely be among the incentives for government agencies to collaborate on standardizing and sharing data. 

As more and more data become available and more powerful processors are able to link the information in different ways, we can only begin to imagine what kinds of security-related predictions we will be able to make from this data in the coming years. 

The growing power of predictive analytics in the realm of crime and terrorism prevention will have a profound impact on our society and democratic rights. Predictive analytics based on big data is all about correlation, not causation. Even when algorithms are highly accurate at linking patterns of behaviour to future acts of crime or terrorism, there will still be innocently intentioned individuals who match these patterns of behaviour only through coincidence. How should we balance the presumption of innocence for these individuals with society’s interest in minimizing criminality and terrorism?

There will also be the temptation for governments to use the capacity to predict and forestall behaviour more widely than crime and terrorism to encompass legitimate protest and political dissent. What forms of democratic control on the use of this type of big data application will be appropriate to limit the capacity for authoritarian use?

It is likely that different societies will reach different kinds of consensus on the appropriate limits for such technology. To what extent will it be acceptable for governments to monitor and analyse data generated by foreign visitors to their country?

Predictive analytics could significantly decrease the incidence of crime and terrorism and make the world a safer place – but only if we can find ways to minimize the risk of misuse and undesired side effects.

9
9 “Survey Analysis: Big Data Investment Grows but Deployments Remain Scarce in 2014”. Gartner Inc., https://www.gartner.com/doc/2841519/survey-analysis-big-data-investment, 2014.
Back to Top
Subscribe for updates
A weekly update of what’s on the Global Agenda
Follow Us
About
Our Mission
Leadership and Governance
Our Members and Partners
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Communities
History
Klaus Schwab
Our Impact
Media
Pictures
A Global Platform for Geostrategic Collaboration
Careers
Open Forum
Contact Us
Mapping Global Transformations
Code of Conduct
World Economic Forum LLC
Sustainability
World Economic Forum Privacy Policy
Media
News
Accreditation
Subscribe to our news
Members & Partners
Member login to TopLink
Strategic Partners' area
Partner Institutes' area
Global sites
Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Open Forum
Global Shapers
Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship
EN ES FR 日本語 中文
© 2022 World Economic Forum
Privacy Policy & Terms of Service