ACM TechNews

Clarifications Sought on Data Mining

Federal Computer Week (07/24/08) Bain, Ben

Several experts at a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) conference on implementing privacy protections in government data mining said there is confusion over what constitutes data mining. They said the lack of an agreed-upon definition and specific rules governing different types of data mining increases the chances of privacy violations. The DHS' 2007 annual privacy office report to Congress stated that there is no consensus on what constitutes data mining. The Data Mining Reporting Act, passed as part of an anti-terrorism law in 2007, defines data mining as "a program involving pattern-based queries, searches, or other analyses of one or more electronic databases." University of Massachusetts computer science professor David Jensen says data mining means many things to many different people, and that definitions that portray data mining as a process of filtering or extraction are easy to understand and to misinterpret. He says more useful definitions explain that data mining is a process involving making inferences based on probability ratings. Vanderbilt University law professor Christopher Slobogin says people could be hurt if authorities use data-mining techniques in good faith but use bad information, or if they intentionally use data mining maliciously.

http://www.fcw.com/online/news/153267-1.html

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