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Data Mining Becomes Big Business
Posted by Raul Ruiz on Saturday, January 04 @ 19:01:55 EST
Contributed by henryoh
Privacy
henryoh writes "Time Magazine is running a story about the growth of data mining in both the public and private spheres. Data mining has been used for such serious purposes as detecting connections between suspected terrorists and for such trivial matters (at least to me) as to what size and color of bra a store should stock depending on its location. With the government's interest in data mining expanding as new applications for the technology come to light, and with the government expected to spend over $53 billion on IT this year alone, data mining will have an increasing role in our lives, whether we realize it or not.

What troubles me about the technology is that it creates a false assumption of certainty. Obviously, the technology in large part depends on the algorithms remaining secret from those it is scrutinizing. While customers may not swim against the predictive tide simply to be contrary, you can bet that the "bad guys" will definitely be much savvier about making their behavior harder to predict. This is one of the primary criticisms leveled against airline passenger profiling. While secrecy is important to predictive modeling, this same secrecy is at odds with our democratic system. If one is constantly harrassed by the government because of activity mistakenly believed to be predictive of a threat, shouldn't one also know why the government is taking an interest so that the necessary changes can be made to return one's life to normal? If not, one might end up like this woman who's been stuck in a Kafka novel ever since her name erroneously ended up on a master terrorist list.

A second, important concern is the danger data mining poses to personal privacy. Although the issue gets short shrift in the Time article, the threat posed to privacy by the widespread adoption of sophisticated data modeling is very real and will only become greater as the technology advances. A world in which the government collects mass amounts of data to predict criminal behavior is not very different than the world envisioned in Minority Report...minus the bald-headed psionics. "
 
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