In the Know: From the Edison Awards, how your personal data is shared '1,000 times a second'
Phil Fernandez
Hey Red Sox and Twins baseball fans, Lee County plans to keep tabs on you.
"Cell phone usage is the major tracker for mobility tracking," said John Talmage, director of the Lee County Economic Development Office. "We're proud to host the Red Sox and the Minnesota Twins spring training.
"We're going to spend a lot of time this next year, geofencing those stadiums to understand where those consumers come from to buy season tickets, that come here for one game, that come here and stay for a staycation or who come here from Boston to spend the season."
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The topic came up as part of discussions at this week's Edison Awards, the annual gathering of some of Earth's top senior business and government executives, academics and inventors at Caloosa Sound Convention Center in Fort Myers.
"We can aggregate the data ourselves, and create our own metadata sets to mine and to distribute it," Talmage said. "What is it they like? What do they consume when they're at home? What don't we have in our market that they may have in Boston or Springfield or whatnot? And then we can spend our time trying to reach out to those retailers, to those investors, to come here."
That may make a few a bit uncomfortable.
"There's always kind of this dichotomy between public access and data privacy," said Rich Calkins, information technology director for the city of Fort Myers. "GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and laws that say 'Don't follow me, don't track me' — those sometimes conflict with the innovation of 'Hey, we need to know our customers.' Like John needs to know what businesses to attract, and we get that by following people."
When it comes down to it, many of you are constantly tracked and may not realize it, and "there's nothing in the U.S. that protects you against that," said Sandy Clark, information security research scientist and cyber security analyst for Apple.
"In Europe, particularly in some countries, the individual owns their own data, but in the U.S., whoever collects your data, owns it," Clark said. "I can stand on a street corner, and pick up the SSIDs of everybody whose phone has Wi-Fi turned on. Their phones are shouting to the Internet, a thousand times a second, here's my unique identification number that makes me different from everybody else in the world, and here's the five networks I connect to most frequently.
"And then I can go on WiGLE.net and find out where you live. Or the coffee shop you go to most often. And then I can just track you home, and I have the legal right to do that."
'Your refrigerator is ratting you out'
Some worry about the implications.
"I'm scared to death of how it can be abused. I really am. Particularly at the level of the individual," Clark said. "Your history will travel with you, and that data will never go away. I worry about the information all the data brokers collecting on you being sold to someone who will then use it against you. Can you not get health care because somebody bought information that you bought too much bacon this week or something?"
PBS NewsHour Journalist Miles O'Brien chimed in: "Your refrigerator is ratting you out, right? It could do it, couldn't it?"
Clark: "Your smart phone is talking to your smart TV anyway. Who knows who's getting that kind of information? So I worry about that kind of thing."
No one during the discourse said they expected anything to change for Americans.
"I would really like to own my own information. To have it not stored against me permanently. I don't think we're likely to get that because it doesn't help business. But that's what I want," said Clark, who does celebrate the digital age's pluses. "It is cool, you know. You can find the information that you want. You can talk to anybody. I love living in the future."
The future and the advancements to come are what's at the heart of the Edison Awards, named after Southwest Florida winter resident and global whiz Thomas Alva Edison, who lived about a mile from this downtown event and died in 1931. Established in 1987 in New York City, the confab of some of the planet's greatest minds wrapped up Friday, the second time it's been held locally.
'Game-changing' inventions, services
More than 150 entities from all over the world received honors for "game changing" products and services including Fortune 500 companies, small start-ups and others. Organizations recognized include Naples-based Arthrex, Tampa Bay Healthcare Collaborative, IBM, LEGO Education, Boeing, Under Armour, Dow Chemical, Carrier, American Red Cross, 3M, Boston Scientific and Taiwan Textile Research Institute.
"We remain impressed by the reach of Edison's innovative spirit, and grateful to the dedicated men and women who passionately produce such advanced solutions," said Edison Universe Executive Director Frank Bonafila.
A Southwest Florida student was among the top two Young Edison Challenge winners. Organizers said the pupils brought to life Edison’s values by providing solutions to problems displayed within their communities:
• Gold winner: Vizuell by Pria Sawhney, Lexington High School in Massachusetts.
Vizuell is an alcohol-based, verifiable hand-sanitizer that decolorizes after initial application. Through temporary visual cues, health care workers can ensure total hand coverage, and the casual observer can verify proper sanitization, according to the Edison Awards. Vizuell works to tackle healthcare-associated infections and transmission of COVID-19.
• Silver winner: S.E.A.M. by Sonia Patel, Community School of Naples.
Known as S.E.A.M., the Silicone Eye Applanation Model is a physical model of the human eye utilizing proprietary silicone to simulate the cornea. The goal is to train ophthalmic medical assistants how to measure eye pressure without using human subjects to reduce corneal injuries. The secondary goal is to raise awareness of the No. 1 cause of irreversible blindness: Glaucoma.
Based at the Naples Daily News, Columnist Phil Fernandez (pfernandez@gannett.com) writes In the Know as part of the USA TODAY NETWORK. Support Democracy and subscribe to a newspaper.