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<p class="lastUpdated" id="publicationDate"> <span class="time">June
2, 2013 7:01 pm</span></p>
<h1>Obama’s faith in the geek elite who have your secrets</h1>
<p class="byline brandThumbnailImage"> <mime-attachment.gif> <span>By Edward Luce</span></p>
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<div class="standfirst"> Self-interest guides the Big Data
companies, and the same is often true of the White House </div>
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<div class="fullstoryImage fullstoryImageHybrid article" style="width:600px"><span class="story-image"><mime-attachment.jpg><span class="credit manualSource">©Matt Kenyon</span></span></div>
<p><span class="firstletter">O</span>n Monday, Barack Obama’s
administration begins its court martial of <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6efce214-81c9-11e2-b050-00144feabdc0.html" title="Manning pleads guilty to classified leaks - FT.com">Bradley
Manning</a>, the former US army private who uploaded hundreds
of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks. Reasonable
people disagree on whether Mr Manning “aided the enemy” (as
President Obama’s prosecutors allege) or is a hero for helping
to educate us about Washington’s shadowy drone programme. Most
are surprised the White House is demanding a life sentence four
years after putting Mr Manning behind bars. In their view, Mr
Obama is a self-confessed geek with Silicon Valley’s transparent
“Do no evil” values. Yet he regularly betrays these with <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aef24916-c776-11e2-be27-00144feab7de.html" title="Press freedom: A heavy-handed approach - FT.com">his
“Nixonian” mania for secrecy</a>.</p>
<p>Such concerns are charmingly naive: Mr Obama is no traitor to
geek culture. His administration shares many of the faults and
virtues of the Silicon Valley leaders to whom it is so closely
allied. Mr Manning’s prosecution begins three days after the
White House co-hosted its second “We the Geeks” conference with
Google. This Thursday, Mr Obama will attend a fundraiser at the
home of Vinod Khosla, one of Silicon Valley’s most celebrated
venture capital geeks. And in the coming months the White House
will be pushing for Congress to pass immigration reform –
alongside a newly-created lobby group founded by Mark
Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook. This controversial
outfit is called Forward (<a href="http://Fwd.us">Fwd.us</a>), which was also the slogan of
Mr Obama’s 2012 campaign.</p>
<p>One of the geekocracy’s main characteristics is a serene faith
in its own good motives. It is not hard to imagine how much
greater the US left’s outrage would be over the drone programme
were it carried out by George W. Bush or Mitt Romney. When Mr
Obama asks Americans to trust that he evaluates every target on
his “kill list”, most acquiesce. That pass is also extended to
Mr Obama’s “signature strikes”, which select targets by
probability based on often sketchy information. But there is a
world of difference between zapping a known target and taking an
educated guess. It is hard to avoid the suspicion that Mr
Obama’s reputation for being a nerd shields him from tougher
criticism. Call it geek exceptionalism. To his credit, <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3c8e2d2e-c495-11e2-9ac0-00144feab7de.html" title="Republicans see Obama’s vow to end to ‘war on terror’
as retreat - FT.com">Mr Obama conveyed last month</a> that he
shares much of this disquiet in a lapidary address on
counterterrorism.</p>
<p>If signature strikes – attacking suspected terrorists before
they can act – are the stuff of the film <em>Minority Report</em>’s
“pre-crimes”, the Obama campaign’s brilliant use of demographic
data is about “pre-votes”. His data team has aggregated more
detail about individual preferences than most voters know about
themselves. Mr Obama is likely to use his database as a
bargaining tool to help secure his legacy after 2016 (whoever is
the Democratic nominee will need it to win). It is no
coincidence this resembles the growing ingenuity with which
Facebook, and other social media, cull their users’ personal
information. Mr Obama’s operation was partly designed by Silicon
Valley techies. The Obama administration is also a strong ally
of Google, Facebook and others in pushing against Europe’s moves
towards far stronger data privacy rights. France’s so-called
“right to be forgotten” sparks as much derision in Washington as
it does in San Francisco. “Trust us,” say the geeks. “We have
noble motives.”</p>
<p>The reality is more mundane. Self-interest, rather than virtue,
guides the growing clout of these “Big Data” companies in
Washington. The same is often true of Mr Obama. Big data’s
agenda is not confined to immigration reform. Among other areas,
it has a deep interest in shaping what Washington does on
privacy, online education, the school system, the internet,
corporate tax reform, cyber security and even cyber warfare. Big
data is also likely to be influential in the US-European trade
partnership talks, which start this month. Whether the sector
becomes a thorn in the side of the process remains to be seen.
Either way, Americans should be relieved someone is making the
case for privacy. “I don’t say this often but I think the
Europeans are on the right side of the data protection issue,”
says Tyler Cowen, a leading libertarian economist.</p>
<p>For while big data brings innovation, it also has dangerous
side effects. Culture is already pushing Americans towards “data
nudism”. Such currents will only get more acute. Before long, it
will be possible to map an individual’s genetic sequencing at an
affordable price. No one will be forced to attach their genetic
record to online dating profiles. But potential mates may assume
that anyone who chooses not to is concealing a genetic disorder.</p>
<p>America’s middle classes are already in thrall to their often
capricious credit scores – a determination that is notoriously
hard to correct. In a world where the average home will have
hundreds of sensors, and where ubiquitous tracking systems can
intimately map an individual’s habits, the right to privacy
could become an economic tool of survival. Already, US employers
often demand a credit score, a drugs test and fingerprinting
from many kinds of applicant. In the new digital world, the
right to expunge past blemishes may turn into a rumbling civil
struggle.</p>
<p>Should such futurology bother Mr Obama? Yes. A century ago,
Theodore Roosevelt pushed back against the power of the rail
barons and oil titans – the great technological disrupters of
his day. Mr Obama should pay closer heed to history. And he
should become wary of geeks bearing gifts.</p>
<p><a href="mailto:edward.luce@ft.com" target="_blank">edward.luce@ft.com</a><br>
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