Big Data’s End Run around Anonymity and Consent 论文

摘要

Big data promises to deliver analytic insights that will add to the stock of scientific and social scientific knowledge, significantly improve decision making in both the public and private sector, and greatly enhance individual self-knowledge and understanding. They have already led to entirely new classes of goods and services, many of which have been embraced enthusiastically by institutions and individuals alike. And yet, where these data commit to record details about human behavior, they have been perceived as a threat to fundamental values, including everything from autonomy, to fairness, justice, due process, property, solidarity, and, perhaps most of all, privacy. Given this apparent conflict, some have taken to calling for outright prohibitions on various big data practices, while others have found good reason to finally throw caution (and privacy) to the wind in the belief that big data will more than compensate for its potential costs. Still others, of course, are searching for a principled stance on privacy that offers the flexibility necessary for these promises to be realized while respecting the important values that privacy promotes.