Is "Data Mining" becoming tainted because of frequent association with privacy invasion ?

Poll

With data mining recently in the news again in connection with a controversial government scheme, and frequently associated with privacy invasion, the term "data mining" may be becoming unpopular. Do you agree and if so what other terms you prefer to use to describe the field? [195 votes total]
Data mining is still OK to use (79)	41%
"Knowledge Discovery" is a better term (50)	26%
"Predictive analytics" is better (37)	19%
Prefer another term (please comment) (5)	3%
Don't care which term is used (24)	12%

klaus (Exploris, Switzerland), another term for "data mining"
I suggest that all of the suggested terms have one or all of the following weaknesses:

the term does not keep distance: "Knowledge Discovers" is even worse for the relations to the layman public
"predictive analysis" is simply wrong, because there is only partially an anlysis, often there is a lot of "synthesis" in it, of coure, since modeling requires background knowledge and intentions, without which no "analysis" or modeling would be possible.
"data mining" seems neutral but is too metaphorically, and else it suggests by that metaphor (like 'coal mining') that the results of the activity own those which have been mining: actually therefore the concerns against the term are correct.
(the same is true for "discovery")

The SUGGESTED TERM (and correct term) therefore is
"predictive modeling" {services, software}
which does not have any of the weaknesses meant above.

saif, data mining by another name
Knowledge discovery seems more general and data mining can expand into it's meaning. Although leave it to the government to taint that as well.
Can't we just give a name for what the gov. wants
like 'security mining' or something.

Ravi, Use of the term "Data mining"
I still feel the word "data mining" is perfectly OK. If the results of a specific data mining project do not go well with management/government in a given country, it alone should not be a reason to look around for newer terminology. Moreover, "data mining" is the most comprehensive and complete word to describe what is done using it.

Mohammad Mehdi Sepehri, unperceivable exploring -UNEX We need to come up with a new terminology which describes the real mining of KDD or DM. My suggestion is the term "UNperceivable EXploring" or UNEX for short. It has 2 main benefits:
1- Does not resemble things such as coal mining;
2- Gives somehow a real mining of KDD.

Karl Brazier, International DM perception
Would be interesting to see the votes split between US and non-US respondents. Seems from what I read in KDNuggets that the "surveillance society" taint of DM is stronger in the US than here in the UK, where I personally still feel it's a brand name worth defending.

I've always felt it was a much more descriptive term than KD and that the latter is even more difficult to pin down than the former. And PA, by referring only to prediction, seems too narrow to me, excluding mining-to-understand.

Will Dwinnell
Even if "data mining" does not imply something negative, there is certainly confusion as to its exact meaning. It is quite common for the popular press in the United States to use "data mining" to mean the gathering of data. In fact, there are even instances of people using the term "data mine" as a noun, meaning some sort of database which has been gathered secretly.

Andrew Acosta, Name "Data Mining" Tainted? I think "Knowledge Discovery" expresses more meaning and it has not yet been used by the press to describe the activities of the American NSA to detect terrorists.

Miroslav Krzak, Data Mining
I suggest "Essence extraction" which should follow the old philosophical endeavor to extract the essence out of too many data. The philosopher's work is to consider being, and the essence of things.

Eric, DM's committed suicide
In case the BI and data analytics folks haven't noticed ... DM = spying on Capitol Hill. Government funded DM research is and will come under increasing political pressure.

Rob Cooley, Data Mining is by far the most popular
Try googling "data mining", "knowledge discovery", and "predictive analytics" and you can see that data mining is more popular by a factor of about 25 versus KD and 100 versus PA. So like it or not, the term people are most likely to recognize for our field is "data mining". Instead of inventing new terms which just add to the confusion, why not make an effort to clarify the current terminology?

Omar Calzadilla, term
I prefer the term: "Knowledge Discovery Process in Data". In spanish: "Proceso de Descubrimiento de Conocimiento a partir de Datos".

Rob, Data Mining
Where I am, more people are confused between Data Mining and Search and Retrieval....

Greg, US-only?
The term "data mining" doesn't have negative connotations here, in Australia, at least. I wonder if this is true of other English-speaking countries?