Is Data Mining a Threat to Civil Liberties

Poll

Is Data Mining being perceived as a threat to civil liberties, because of its role in Total Information Awareness? [124 votes total] Yes, by many (47) 38% Partly, by few privacy advocates (45) 36% No (13) 10% Never heard of Total Information Awareness (19) 15%

Comments

Peter, TIA
As far as I can tell, the term "data mining" has been applied improperly to Total Information Awareness. One of my former students works on the project. TIA is a data integration effort that is attempting to relate dynamically a number of government and private databases. Once they are linked, they will be examined primarily through ad hoc queries, OLAP tools, etc. The analysts do not believe there is any real possibility of creating models because the number of examples of terrorists and such to use for training models is too small.
So, the proper question should be, "Is data integration a threat to civil liberties?" I think this use of it is.

Manfred, TIA
In the 80s the eggheads talked about privacy - and nobody cared. In the 90s we did Data Mining for business sake - and nobody cared. Now big brother becomes reality - ...

Tom Dietterich, TIA
Data mining is a powerful technology that, if abused, could have terrible consequences. Saying that it is "just a technology" does not contribute to ensuring that this wonderful technology is not abused.

Editor, Data Mining a threat to Civil Liberties?
Because of data mining key role in "Total Information Awareness" program, some people are using "data mining" as almost equivalent to Total Information Awareness. Senator Feingold recently introduced legislation to place a moratorium on data-mining in the Department of Defense.

I was asked recently by a journalist for a major newspaper: "Is data mining a threat to civil liberties?"

Do you feel data mining field is getting a bad image and what can data miners do?