Data Mining

Tavani, H T. (1999). Informational privacy, data mining, and the internet. Ethics and information technology, 1(2), 137. Retrieved from http://condor.library.colostate.edu/sfx_local?sid=google&auinit=HT&aulast=Tavani&atitle=Informational%20privacy%2C%20data%20mining%2C%20and%20the%20Internet&title=Ethics%20and%20information%20technology&volume=1&issue=2&date=1999&spage=137&issn=1388-1957

Tavani uses this article to outline various concerns of “data mining,” a practice wherein one party (usually a company) requests information form an individual and uses this information to gain a better understanding of a situation. Typically, that’s where it ends, but with the advantages provided by the internet, information can be collected at whim via search engines, websites, etc. and used without the express knowledge or consent of the user to form more complex pictures in addition to other information collected by the same system, that forms patterns that neither party could have predicted beforehand. Tavani goes through to explain and discuss the current privacy acts and laws as well as the intricacies of data mining, and the ethics of the current usage. Tavani’s overall argument is that current regulations in place for privacy are ill-equipped to deal with current practices of data mining on the internet and reform is needed in order to better define what exactly is going on.

Tavani is a professor of Philosophy at Rivier College and President of the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology. He has written several published books on the subject of information technology, and indeed his article is does concentrate on the philosophical side of data mining. After outlining the basic information he is working with, he then concentrates on the what ethical boundaries the practice deals with. For the most part Tavani presents a neutral argument, providing both sides of the discussion as to why data mining may provide privacy concerns and why it still works more or less within the boundaries of the current guidelines. Tavani’s central argument is that current definitions of regulation are too vague, and out dated to deal with how data mining is currently being used on the internet. Although he does seem to lean more towards the philosophy that data mining (in its current use) is not in the right, he never comes right out and says it.