What is Pattern of Life Analysis?
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Big data in the context of a total surveillance environment facilitates pattern of life analysis. What is pattern of life analysis? It's the analysis of an individual's past behavior and from this analysis it might be possible to predict future behavior. For instance the surveillance cameras, drones, smart phone, all track where you are at any given time, and the pattern of life emerges over time from the data points which represent where you go each day over the course of a year, who you are around, etc.

So in a big data context when you go to work, to school, out to eat, to the movies, to visit your life partner or family, these are all logged and tracked. When you go online you also leave a digital trail by cookies, by canvas fingerprint, by social media such as Facebook and Steemit, all which produce even more data to be tracked. All of your habits good or bad, digital or not, are being collected for pattern of life analysis in the future by benign or and malicious entities.

My criticism of Steemit's public transaction design
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My main criticism about the design of Steemit is that it's transparent in the wrong way. Unsafe transparency is the absence of privacy in a way which increases the level of risk on those who don't have privacy. In the case that you think of privacy as a privilege then you can justify the absence of privacy if it actually produces greater security but in the case of Steemit I have not been able to determine what security increase or function of certain design decisions. As a result whether on purpose or by accident, Steemit contributes to a digital trail which someday will be collected by bots owned by who knows what to be used for potentially obscene purposes.

Is it safe for the world to know exactly how much money you have in your bank account? Probably not a good idea for people who have a lot and this will discourage people who have a lot from using Steemit. Traditional banks do offer privacy greater than Steemit and security greater than Steemit so a person who uses these services actually might be taking less risk. On the other hand big data is likely going to be collected in either case and pattern of life includes what you do online and how much money you make.

Conclusion
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Pattern of Life Analysis is very powerful yet also very dangerous when used for the wrong purposes. If someone's pattern of life is known then it could be possible to use algorithms and AI to predict future behavior of this person. In fact, corporations probably already are using AI specifically to predict future behavior of people on the large scale, but what has to be considered is what can happen when amoral entities such as cyber criminals who don't respect human rights or the law have the ability to predict our future behavior using AI with these same algorithms.

References
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1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisabrownlee/2015/07/10/the-11-trillion-internet-of-things-big-data-and-pattern-of-life-pol-analytics/#378539334eb8
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern-of-life_analysis