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Tene and Polonetsky [4] note that presently the benefits of Big Data do not accrue
to individuals whose data is harvested, only to big businesses that use such data:
those who aggregate and mine this data neither view their information assets as
public goods held on trust nor seem particularly interested in protecting the privacy
of their data subjects. The truth lies in the opposite because the big data business
model is selling information about their data subjects.
To make Big Data less of a pyramid, Tene and Polonetsky [4] advocate
empowering individuals to control their personal information by giving them
“meaningful rights to access their data in usable, machine-readable format.” They cite
two major advantages of doing this: first, giving this kind of power to individuals
would unleash “innovation for user-side applications and services; second, it would
provide users an incentive to participate in the data economy “by aligning their own
self-interest with broader societal goals” [4].
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Big Data Research Ethics
It is unlikely that we are going to find the answers to the privacy and security issues in
Big Data and the cloud by simply relying on law and regulations. It might be time to
go beyond the law and look into the ethics of Big Data research. For example, does
the mere availability of the data make research ethical? The Target, Harvard, and
Stanford examples we gave earlier underline the importance of this question.
The problem is compounded by the fact that “research ethics boards have
insufficient understanding of the process of anonymizing and mining data, or the
errors that can lead to data becoming personally identifiable,” as well as the fact that
the effects of such errors “may not be realized until many years into the future” [2].
Terry also notes that at the data generation stage, data contributors, such as social
networkers, usually do not have researchers as their audience. Furthermore, “many
have no idea of the processes currently gathering and using their data” [2]. As he
further notes, there is a difference between being in public and being public. Ohm [3]
cautions us that while many benefits of Big Data mining have been touted, we should
be ready to interrogate the balance between these benefits and the attendant privacy
risks.
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Conclusion
Observations of trends so far point to the conclusion that Big Data is here to stay. It is
also evident that Big Data management and exploitation is increasing happening in
the cloud environment. What has not been so apparent is that this combination of Big
Data and the cloud environment is gradually erasing the notion of public/private
distinction. Looking solely at legal solutions might not provide guidance on how to
tackle the increasingly complex privacy issues that are unlikely to diminish in their
frequency of occurrence.
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