Data Mining and Privacy

What data mining technology can do and the question, Is data mining a violation of privacy that ought to be limited by law?

Abstract

Data mining is the intelligent search for new knowledge in existing masses of data. This article reviews what data mining technology can do and asks and answers the question, Is data mining a violation of privacy that ought to be limited by law? - tort law in the case of an individual actor and Fourth Amendment jurisprudence in the case of a state actor. Since data mining is a new technology and the existing data that are mined are presumed to be properly acquired, the answer would appear to be No. However, we deduce from three hypothetical cases of what might be called pre-technological data mining that our intuitions tell us that data mining is indeed a violation of privacy. We then review the case law - which does not agree with our intuitions - and briefly discuss alternative, technological means of protecting privacy in the face of advanced data mining techniques.