Data Mining Ethics - Data Mining for the Masses - page 232

In all seriousness, when we are dealing with data, those data represent peoples' lives. In this topic
alone, we have touched on peoples' buying behaviors, ownership of creative works, and even
serious health issues. Imagine the ethical ramifications of using a decision tree to predict the risk
levels of juvenile delinquents as just one example. You'd be profiling, potentially branding these
youth, so any attempt to do so must be done ethically. But what does this mean? Ethics is the set
of moral codes, above and beyond the legally required minimums, that an individual uses to make
right and respectful decisions. When mining data, questions of an ethical nature will invariably
arise. Simply because it is legal to gather and mine certain data does not make it ethical.
Because of these serious matters, there are some in the world who fear, shun and even fight against
data mining. These types of reactions have led some data mining advocates and leaders to respond
with attempts to defend and explain data mining technologies. One such response came in the
year 2003. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is the world's foremost professional
organization for computing professionals in all disciplines. This includes the ACM Special Interest
Group for Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD). At that time, a number of
criticisms and calls against data mining were occurring, mostly driven by concerns over citizens'
privacy as the United States government increased its use of data mining in anti-terrorism activities
in the years following the September 11 th terrorist attacks. Certainly any time a government
increases its scrutiny of its own citizens and those of other countries, it can be unsettling; however
the leaders of ACM SIGKDD were likewise unsettled by the blame being placed on data mining
itself. These leaders felt that the tool should be separated from the way it was being used. In
response, the executive committee of ACM SIGKDD, a group that included such pioneers as
Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro, Usama Fayyad, Jiawei Han, and others, penned an open letter titled
“ Data Mining” is NOT Against Civil Liberties . (The two-page text of their letter is easily available on
the Internet and you are encouraged to read and consider it). Their objective in writing this letter
was not to defend government, or any data mining programs, but rather, to help individuals see
that there is a large difference between a technology and the choices people make in the ways they
use that technology.
In truth, every technology will have its detractors. It may seem a silly example, but consider a chair
as a technology. It is a tool, invented by mankind to serve a purpose: sitting. If it is ergonomically
designed and made of the right materials, it can facilitate very comfortable sitting. If it is fancy
enough, it may exclude certain socio-economic classes from being able to own it. If pointed into a