Big Data Ethical Issues

No one can deny the convenience and the ease that the Big Data revolution has brought to us. Big Data has changed the way people look at data. However, these advancements have widened the gap between what is possible and what is legally allowed. The scale and ease with which everything can be done in big data has raised concerns on several ethical issues specifically related to privacy, transparency, identity and confidentiality. Through Big Data, developers can now access and tap into varied sources, which can even come from far-flung areas. Something that developers and statisticians from before the Big Data revolution dare to only dream about. According to Jonathan King and Neil Richards, authors of “What’s up with Big Data Ethics?”, man’s ability to discover new patterns and knowledge from data is moving faster than what the current legal and ethical guidelines can manage. As technicalities in the realm of Big Data continue to expand, debates have already ensued as to how Big Data challenges pre-existing policies, as well as the public understanding. According to a study conducted by the Royal Statistical Society (UK), there are 2 primary reasons of questioning big data:
· Trust in the findings
· Truth in the methods The leading concern about the uses of

An application called PredPol is marketed as a predictive policing software. It assists police officers in determining where and at what time should they patrol given a certain jurisdiction. It utilizes three data points - past type of crime, place of crime, and time of crime - to achieve the following: assign probabilities that crime would occur at a given area and time, present relevant information that is understandable by key decision makers, and allows a more efficient deployment of staff and resources. Police staff that utilize Predpol are claimed to be twice as effective in deterring