Hilary Mason Quotes

As a Facebook user, do I have control of the data Facebook keeps about me? Concretely: can I examine and modify that data using tools of my choosing which are built for my needs?

As individuals, we have very little say about how our data is being used. I'm not worried about the privacy implications of it so much. But it seems to me that, as an individual, if I'm the one generating the data, I should have some kind of say in how it's going to be used.

As our society tips toward one based on data, our collective decisions around how that data can be used will determine what kind of a culture we live in.

If the government can manage to collect and release personal information in a secure and useful way, so can private companies, which will empower consumers to become better shoppers.

As medical data has such power to deliver better understanding of disease and better patient outcomes, it is important we find the best way of sharing it.

We want to ensure that as a user is moving through their world, their data is following them in an appropriate manner.

With big data comes big responsibilities.

There's a project that I started at HHS called the Health Data Initiative. The whole idea was to take a page from what the government had done to make weather data and GPS available back in the day.

You can't talk about big data without talking about things like privacy and ownership.

Whether it's Facebook or Google or the other companies, that basic principle that users should be able to see and control information about them that they themselves have revealed to the companies is not baked into how the companies work. But it's bigger than privacy. Privacy is about what you're willing to reveal about yourself.

I believe people have a right to know what's going on with their information and how it's collected, how it's stored and who gets it.

I clearly say yes to Big Data, yes to greater security and convenience, but no to paternalism and Big Brother.'

Individuals deserve the right to control what happens to their personal data at any given moment -- not only after someone else has obtained it, perhaps even without consent.

It is very important, to have a robust digital economy, that the citizens regain the trust in how their data are being processed and who can access them.

People should have to opt in for any kind of data sharing, and they should know what the data is being used for.

It always makes me super nervous how many tech companies don't have data ethicists.

People used to be unhappy that files and data of Aramco are undeclared, unclear, and not transparent.

Sharing data allows us to research, communicate, consume media, buy and sell, play games, and more. In return, businesses develop products, scientists undertake research, and governments use data to enable voting, inform policies, collect tax, and provide better public services.

We need a basic protection for people having access to their data and knowing where their data is.

What if in a permission-based structure, you could decide if you wanted to provide value to advertisers or to political groups? Or, for instance, share your medical data for cancer research? All those options should be available for an individual to make.

The cloud is driven by statistics, and even in the worst individual cases of personal ignorance, dullness, idleness, or irrelevance, every person is constantly feeding data into the cloud these days. The value of such information could be treated as genuine, but it is not. Instead, the blindness of our standards of accounting to all that value is gradually breaking capitalism.

Apple knows a lot of data. Facebook knows a lot of data. Amazon knows a lot of data. Microsoft used to, and still does with some people, but in the newer world, Microsoft knows less and less about me. Xbox still knows a lot about people who play games. But those are the big five, I guess.

Information agencies operate in an industry that values data. Restricted access to information is what makes it valuable.

And the user may have a higher comfort level deciding what information to provide rather than worrying about what inferences might be made from what they've gathered.

Uncontrolled access to data, with no audit trail of activity and no oversight would be going too far. This applies to both commercial and government use of data about people.