Enigma publishes 100,000 public databases; big data for everyone

Enigma launched today with an intriguing service: The New York based startup offers an easy way to search through more than 100,000 public databases.

Chris Velazco at TechCrunch reported:

Founded by Hicham Oudghiri and Marc Dacosta, and helmed by CEO Jeremy Bronfmann, Enigma taps into over 100,000 public data source,s from state and federal records, to SEC filings, to lists of frozen assets in the United Kingdom all the way, to Crunchbase. The end result is an incredibly simple, incredibly smart way to sift through and find connections in publicly available data.

Foremski's Take

Within a single public database, there's likely little of interest to society at large. But if there's links across tens of thousands of databases, then we will see many skeletons coming out of many people's closets, and probably on a scale larger than Wikileaks. It's a fabulous bonanza for investigative reporters, the ones that are still around.

However, you don't have to be elite and famous to fear the big data engines of Enigma, the databases will be picked over by multitudes of marketing companies researching information about individual consumers.

Big Brother technologies are on the rise and are being used to divine your intent. Fortunately, they aren't looking for mind-crimes but for the mundane — where you'll spend your next dollar.