Database Reference
In-Depth Information
have what they call participant-informed consent. Let's say I have you in one of my Face-
book studies, and you're coming to my lab and we are analyzing the strength of the connec-
tions between you and your friends. I'm getting information about your friends and their
friends without their consent. It's a very, very ethically sensitive area.”
In academic settings there have long been some protections in effect via guidelines
promulgated in 1978's Belmont Report - guidelines designed to protect the identities and
interests of human research subjects. But these guidelines - adherence to which are a pre-
requisite to any Federal funding - chiefly address subjects engaged in
voluntary direct
research after having given informed consent to the research being transacted
. “This is
where it gets interesting with Big Data, because there are a lot of things you can do with
Big Data that don't involve talking with people,” says Karahalios. “If your study involves
just scraping the Web, and not talking to a human, you don't have to [worry about the Bel-
mont Report].”
When it comes to non-academic studies such as those conducted by Data Science
teams within commercial enterprises, such items as the Belmont Report don't even apply.
Users are particularly exposed and at risk when they participate in open social networks
such as Facebook or Instagram, or maintain a Google identity (including gmail) or use a
free e-mail service such as Yahoo. The general policy of such organizations is that the user
“pays” for participation on their service(s) by sacrificing some measure of privacy. The
currency paid is personal data - buying habits, etc.
Confusion shall prevail for the forseeable future.
“There are academic workshops on the governance of algorithms,” says Dr. Schutt,
“and I know that high-level executives from major corporations go to Washington and have
meetings, but I don't think there's a uniform policy or standardization for what should be
done with user-level data. We've been looking to companies like Google or Facebook to
do the right thing and to set the standard but to the extent these are enforced or that other
companies have to follow, a lot of this stuff isn't in place … It's the sort of thing where …
[many] people don't object and it doesn't seem that bad, but it really opens the door up to
worse things.”
Indeed it does.
