Privacy Concerns could limit benefits from real-time Data Analysis
In a "Perspectives" column, Tom M. Mitchell, head of the Machine Learning Department in Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, notes that data-mining techniques, once used for scientific analysis or for detecting potential credit card fraud, increasingly are being applied to personal activities, conversations and movements, such as information that can be deduced about an individual by monitoring that person's smart phone. "The potential benefits of mining such data range from reducing traffic congestion and pollution, to limiting the spread of disease, to better using public resources such as parks, buses, and ambulance services," Mitchell wrote. "But risks to privacy from aggregating these data are on a scale that humans have never before faced."
Dec 29, 2009 12:00 AM
Medical News Today