Revealing the Uncommonly Common with Elasticsearch by Mark Harwood.
From the summary:
Mark Harwood shows how anomaly detection algorithms can spot card fraud, incorrectly tagged movies and the UK’s most unexpected hotspot for weapon possession.
Makes me curious about the market for a “Mr./Ms. Normal” service?
A service that enables you to enter your real viewing/buying/entertainment preferences and for a fee, the service generates a paper trail for you than hides your real habits in digital dust.
If you order porn from NetFlix then the “Mr./Ms. Normal” service will order enough PBS and NatGeo material to even out your renting record.
Depending on how extreme your buying habits happen to be, you may need a “Mr./Ms. Abnormal” service that shields you from any paper trail at all.
As data surveillance grows, having a pre-defined Mr./Ms. Normal/Abnormal account may become a popular high school/college graduation or even a wedding present.
The usefulness of data surveillance depends on the cooperation of its victims. Have you ever considered not cooperating? But appearing to?