Data Mining

Where's All My Info?

How much personal information remains private in today's world? Data mining is a huge industry that intrudes in the lives of society by gathering information on individuals legally but without knowledge or consent. As Yu-Chin Lin explains in his article "A New Approach to Generate Patterns from Enterprise Databases" in Notes in Computer Science, data mining is a business that thrives on opportunity, taking advantage where it sees fit, recording online transactions, internet histories, and buying spending habits from retailers. It also acquires bank information such as credit card numbers, mother's maiden name, and social security numbers. Not only do data companies collect sensitive data, but they also collect birthdates, height, eye and hair color, current and former addresses, religion, criminal and arrest records, sexual preference, friends and relatives, medical conditions and more. This data is cross checked several times and entered into databases where it is stored along with millions of other entrants (Lin 371).

Data mining companies, that collect information on individuals, sell the information in such forms as background checks and personal information portfolios. Companies that buy this information the most include banks, insurance companies, law firms, the media, marketers, private investigators, and law enforcement and other government agencies. There are problems with having a large amount of private data on a consumer. The data is not always stored in a secure location and is susceptible to hack and information loss. The data is stored in large amounts with several individuals in a central location; once a hacker is in, he has access to several hundreds of thousands of "pages" of data. These data companies are not listening to anyone but their lawyers on how they should protect and store the data they collect. Data mining is becoming a large business and has the potential to get out of control. The Federal government should implement regulations on the collection of data, notifying individuals about their data, and the usage of private data once collected.

Companies that collect data argue that data collection is not illegal and that they safeguard their material effectively against data theft and loss. The article "Commercial Personal Data Collection" from Issues and Controversies explains that data collection companies are "generally interested in safeguarding it [the data] to the best of their abilities." The article goes on to talk about a data company that recently had a large amount of data stolen from its databases. "The value of stock dropped significantly in the wake of the security breach revelations. Companies will do whatever is necessary to keep their image and value intact" ("Commercial"). Companies who are public and have shareholders need to maintain a business image. When data mining companies have large security breaches the shareholders view this as a weakness in the company and sell the stock. This drops the value of the company and presents the company in a bad light. All businesses want their stock to be rising because it shows positive growth in the company. Like all businesses data collection companies strive to maintain a positive image. Data loss presents a negative image for data mining companies and is a sign of bad business. Data mining companies will protect their information as much as necessary to maintain positive growth and good business.

Many critics also reply that consumers have a choice as to how much information they allow for companies to collect. They suggest that people who are worried about data mining of their credit histories can choose to not rely on credit cards as much for their financial transactions. They believe legal regulations should not dictate people's privacy, but they believe it's acceptable to regulate a person's awareness and the choices they make. "The correct approach, obviously, is for consumers to be educated about what they reveal when they interact online and in business" comments Jim Harper in Data Mining and Predictive Analysis (Qtd in McCue 37). Data mining companies believe that consumers have the right to regulate their own personal data and that consumer awareness is important. Data collection companies state, that consumer awareness can help control how much data a user allows to be mined.

Another problem opponents believe regulating commercial data collection will have, is that it infringes on the freedom of speech. For example, "When companies make consumer information available, it is in a form of commercial speech, they maintain, meaning that in most cases it is protected from regulation that is 'more extensive than necessary'" ("Commercial"). Assuming that consumers have a certain amount of choice in how much information they reveal, critics say that regulating commercial speech of data companies would be unnecessary. Data mining companies do not believe that data collection is the problem, but that hackers and frauds are the cause of controversy in their field.

A major weakness in the opposition's view is that although many data collection companies want their collected information protected, several collection companies have had large amounts of data stolen or sold to fraudulent companies. In recent years, the following companies had a significant loss of data in the form of hackers, lost laptops, lost disks, and backup tapes: Department of Justice with 80,000 entries, Choice Point with 145,000 entries, University of Texas with 197,000 entries, Marines with 207,750 entries, Time Warner with 600,000 entries, Bank of America with 1,200,000 entries, Citi Group with 3,900,000 entries, and the Department of Veterans with 26,500,000 entries lost (Big Brother). These large data breaches are not small figures. They show significant loss of large amounts of data to individuals that unlawfully obtained the information. If data collection companies were concerned about their data, then the loss of data should not be this large, or there should not be any loss of data at all.

Another flaw that the critics against government regulation have in their beliefs is that the consumer has a choice as to what data is being mined by him or her. In many cases consumers have never heard of companies such as Lexis Nexis or DSW Retail. For example, when Choice Point had their records stolen in 2005, Chris Hoofnagel the Associate Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center was quoted in "Commercial Personal Data Collection" from Issues and Controversies said, "When individuals understand the amount and detail in the information that these companies are selling, their attitudes are likely to sour"