Cookies help us display personalized product recommendations and ensure you have great shopping experience.

By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
  • Analytics
    AnalyticsShow More
    data analytics and truck accident claims
    How Data Analytics Reduces Truck Accidents and Speeds Up Claims
    7 Min Read
    predictive analytics for interior designers
    Interior Designers Boost Profits with Predictive Analytics
    8 Min Read
    image fx (67)
    Improving LinkedIn Ad Strategies with Data Analytics
    9 Min Read
    big data and remote work
    Data Helps Speech-Language Pathologists Deliver Better Results
    6 Min Read
    data driven insights
    How Data-Driven Insights Are Addressing Gaps in Patient Communication and Equity
    8 Min Read
  • Big Data
  • BI
  • Exclusive
  • IT
  • Marketing
  • Software
Search
© 2008-25 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: The Use and Abuse of Big Data
Share
Notification
Font ResizerAa
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
  • About
  • Help
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
SmartData Collective > Big Data > Data Mining > The Use and Abuse of Big Data
AnalyticsBig DataData MiningPrivacySecurity

The Use and Abuse of Big Data

Barry Devlin
Barry Devlin
5 Min Read
SHARE

Big dataAs we begin a new year, we are promised a move from a focus on the meaning and technology of big data to the useful and worthwhile business applications it may offer.  A timely move indeed.  Hopefully, we’ll begin to hear less about analyzing Twitter streams to optimize advertising and more about applications with

Big dataAs we begin a new year, we are promised a move from a focus on the meaning and technology of big data to the useful and worthwhile business applications it may offer.  A timely move indeed.  Hopefully, we’ll begin to hear less about analyzing Twitter streams to optimize advertising and more about applications with the potential to improve people’s lives or the environment.  And even more hopefully, people may begin to consider the risks they run when revealing or gathering personal data on our deeply interconnected Web.

With all of the synchronicity that is the Internet, I came across two articles from the New York Times published in last week. The first, by Peter Jaret on January 14, describes how patient records, transcribed and digitized from scrawled (why do they write so poorly?) doctors’ notes, anonymized and stored on the Web, can be statistically mined to discover previously unknown side-effects of and interactions between prescribed drugs.  Clearly useful and valuable work.  The second article, three days later by Gina Kolata, revealed how easily a genetics researcher was able to identify five individuals and their extended families by combining publicly-available information from the anonymized 1000 Genome Project database, a commercial genealogy Web site, and Google.  Kolata quotes Amy L. McGuire, a lawyer and ethicist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston: “To have the illusion you can fully protect privacy or make data anonymous is no longer a sustainable position.”  The underlying genetic data is used in medical research to good effect, of course, but what are the possible consequences for those individuals thus identified as insurance companies, governments or other interested parties make potentially negative assessments based on their once private genomes?

Such occurrences–and there are many of them–should be deeply disturbing to those of us involved in the business of big data and analytics.  Here are doctors, scientists and lawyers–with training in logic, ethics and law–who see the power of analytics to improve the human condition, but who seem to gloss over the wider privacy and security implications of making personal information widely available on the Web.  After all, the limits of data anonymization on the web were being discussed openly as long ago as May 2011 by Pete Warden on the O’Reilly Radar blog.  And as far back as 1997, Prof. Latanya Sweeney, now Director of the Data Privacy Lab at Harvard, could show that the combination of gender, ZIP code and birthdate was unique for 87% of the U.S. population.  

More Read

Image
Mining for Gold in Your Data
What Skills Are Needed for a Career in Data-Driven Cybersecurity?
Show and Tell (via IBMSocialMedia)
Best Practices Databases Are Replaced by Social Networks
How to Develop a Big Data Strategy to Outperform Your Competitors

Eben Moglen, professor of law and legal history at Columbia University and Chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center, warned at re:publica Berlin in May 2012 that “media that spies on and data-mines the public is destroying freedom of thought and only this generation, the last to grow up remembering the ‘old way,’ is positioned to save this, humanity’s most precious freedom.”  With media and medicine, government and retail, telecommunications and finance all gathering hoards of information about us, each for their own allegedly good purpose, the reality is now that the abuse of big data (as opposed to its use) is not only possible, but proceeding apace, even in largely democratic, Western states.

So, given that big data anonymity is “no longer a sustainable position,” it should be clear that the analytics possible on today’s high-powered computers is a double-edged sword; it serves us poorly to focus only on a single, razor-sharp edge.  As we evaluate and build useful and worthwhile business analytics applications of this coming year, let us step back, even occasionally, to contemplate whether the profits to be earned or the discoveries to be made are worth the price of human freedom.

Share This Article
Facebook Pinterest LinkedIn
Share

Follow us on Facebook

Latest News

AI Document Verification for Legal Firms: Importance & Top Tools
AI Document Verification for Legal Firms: Importance & Top Tools
Artificial Intelligence Exclusive
AI supply chain
AI Tools Are Strengthening Global Supply Chains
Artificial Intelligence Exclusive
data analytics and truck accident claims
How Data Analytics Reduces Truck Accidents and Speeds Up Claims
Analytics Big Data Exclusive
predictive analytics for interior designers
Interior Designers Boost Profits with Predictive Analytics
Analytics Exclusive Predictive Analytics

Stay Connected

1.2kFollowersLike
33.7kFollowersFollow
222FollowersPin

You Might also Like

hospital management systems
Big DataExclusive

Is Big Data Transforming Our Broken Hospital Management Systems?

5 Min Read

The Legal Performance Continuum: Putting Your Data to Work – Part 1

4 Min Read

What Changes Will Big Data Analytics Bring?

9 Min Read
data center encryption
Security

Strategies for Ensuring Security in Hyperconverged Infrastructure

8 Min Read

SmartData Collective is one of the largest & trusted community covering technical content about Big Data, BI, Cloud, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, IoT & more.

ai chatbot
The Art of Conversation: Enhancing Chatbots with Advanced AI Prompts
Chatbots
giveaway chatbots
How To Get An Award Winning Giveaway Bot
Big Data Chatbots Exclusive

Quick Link

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-25 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Go to mobile version
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?