Analytics and Big Data for Accountants, 2nd Edition

Chapter 9Ethics and Privacy With Big Data

Learning objectives

• Identify how big data can be misused even when there is no intent to do harm.
• Recognize how everyone is being tracked and recorded in big data systems.
• Recall the implications of large-scale video monitoring tools and the ability to track individuals across the country.

Introduction

One of the biggest drawbacks to big data is the potential for violation of individual privacy. In this chapter, we will examine examples of big data that have been used in ways that might be hurtful to an individual or intrusive from a privacy aspect. It is important that every organization evaluate how big data affects its ethics policies.

Ethical questions

Throughout this text, we have considered many different examples of big data. Unfortunately, ethical implications of use, accumulation, or sharing of that data have not kept pace with the vast increase in the volume of big data. Consider the following situations:

• Data that is pushed by the owner to a provider (even with access permission) that the data owner is unaware of.
• Data that the user is aware of but has not given permission to access like personal photos.
• Data that the user is aware of but never thought that it would be used for such purposes, for example
  • insurance and health information, or
  • texting status (especially when there is an accident).
• Data that is collected from internet surfing patterns.
• Data embedded in other objects such as video, audio, or photo.