Ethics and Responsibility

1. Ethics and Responsibility

2. Definitions • Etiology • Greek "ethos" meaning "character" • Latin Moral "mos" meaning "custom" • Ethics The rules that govern what is right and what is wrong for a person to do • Morals The principles of right and wrong based on a standard (society or religion), on which ethics are based

3. Ethical Considerations • Privacy • Data security • Accuracy • Research

4. Technology and Ethics • Ethical considerations follow technological innovations • Stick & stones • Nuclear fission • Information technology • File sharing • Passwords • Data storage

5. Codes of Ethics • ACM Code of Ethics • IEEE Code of Ethics • Medical Code of Ethics • Manataka American Indian Council • Greek Fraternity Code of Ethics

6. Application of Ethics • Ethics implies social considerations • Involves • Privacy • Data security • Accuracy • Research

7. DI and Privacy • Large files may contain private information • Data could be used long after its original collection date • Data could be used beyond its collection purpose • The purpose of knowledge discovery may not be known until some pattern is revealed in the data • The information revealed by DI may be inappropriate

8. Protecting Privacy • Privacy is contextual and a based on individual perceptions so a global assurance of privacy cannot be achieved • Steps to enhance privacy protection • Anonymization of personal data • Provide to the user a method to review their personal data that is to be used in DI and decide for themselves

9. Privacy • The type and amount of information a person is willing to share defines their privacy • Notion of privacy violation • Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development guidelines – 1980 • Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA - 1974) • Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA - 1996)

10. Problems with Privacy • Current practices fall short of protecting privacy • People are unaware of the need to communicate with data holders • People must be assertive and proactive • The government as Big Brother • The Patriot Act

11. DI and Databases • Two positions to consider: • DI operations authorized by an individual or organization that hold full access to the data • DI operations unauthorized to mine the data, but have access for other reasons

12. Protecting Databases • Authorization • Single level vs Multi-Level Security • Encryption • Auditing • Precautions • Mining only one security level can prevent inference from less sensitive data to more sensitive data • Render the data useless for mining • Introduction of noise in the data • Introduction of instability in the data

13. DI and Data Accuracy • DI uses data from many diverse, possibly external data sources • Initial data quality cannot be known • Noisy, obsolete, inaccurate, incomplete • Expired data can lead to inaccurate patterns discovered

14. Data Accuracy • Inaccuracies are difficult to correct • Expired data is undetectable until a person is affected by applying the patterns discovered in the data • Adopt data quality management • Correct errors in data with expediency • Frequent data cleaning

15. DI and Research • Science is founded in truth and relies on ethical behavior in practice • Clearly defined ethical guidelines for DI are not yet stated • Consider ethical strategies for • Data collection, data storage, retention, authorship, publication, supervision of students and research assistants, disclosure, misconduct rules • Human subjects

16. User-defined Sensitivity Factors • Reference: • Wahlstrom K, Roddick J. On the Impact of Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. 2nd Australian Institute of Computer Ethics Conference (AICE2000), Canberra, 2001. • Users are the most qualified to qualify the sensitivity of their own data within context • Provide users with a tool to specify sensitivity level when data is being collected • Use sensitivity value with data in DI methods

17. DI Code of Ethics • There isn’t one. • Should there be?