An artist tests whether New Yorkers will give away their mother's maiden name or part of their Social Security number for a homemade cookie.

This year has seen a number of sexual assault and domestic violence issues make the headlines. Of course, the National Football League and the accusations that it covered up, or at least diminished awareness of and penalties for, widespread domestic violence continue to garner media attention....

Am I the only person who finds this absolutely horrifying?

With the advent of smartphones and tablets - devices users often carry with them everywhere they go - collected location data became a valuable source of

For many, the concept of the “data revolution” conjures up images of online transactions, genomic medical data, and ubiquitous sensor networks. But [...]

Two University of Maryland law professors allege that the social network's experiments—and OkCupid’s—count as "research," and thus violate state statute.

"But where data mining is used to aid decisions, it has the potential to reproduce existing patterns of discrimination, inherit the prejudice of prior decisionmakers, or simply reflect the widespread biases that persist in society."

Using a mistaken-email-address situation to illuminate the "well, I didn't ASK for the data, it's just THERE" excuse and why it's creepy.

Benjamin Wittes and Jane Chong examine how the law will respond as we become more cyborg-like, and the divide between human and machine becomes ever-more unstable. In particular, they consider how the law of surveillance will shift as we develop from humans who use machines into humans who partially are machines or, at least, who depend on machines pervasively for our most human-like activities.

Ethics of Data Conference working list

Each kid is unique, but there’s one thing all students have in common: They are data-generating machines. This tsunami of data is absorbed and stored by school districts, state databases, educational service providers, websites, and app makers. Most of this data collection is well intentioned, but not all.

– It is clear that libraries consider the use of data to inform decision making a top priority in the next five years. JISC's considerable work on activity data has highlighted the lack of tools and services for libraries to exploit this data. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of a shared analytics service for UK academic libraries and introduce the JISC Library Analytics and Metrics Project. The project aims to help libraries effectively management collections and services as well as delivering pre-emptive indicators and “actionable insights” to help identify new trends, personalise services and improve efficiencies, economies and effectiveness (student attainment and satisfaction and institutional reputation, for example). The project builds on the Library Impact Data Project at the University of Huddersfield and the work of the Copac Activity Data and Collections Management tools. The paper will deliver a case study of the project, its progress to date, the challenges of such an approach and the implications the service has for academic libraries. , – The paper will be a case study of the project and its institutional partners and early adopters work to date and explore both the technical and cultural challenges of the work as well as its implications for the role of the library within the institution and the services it provides. Specifically the case study will comprise of the following aspects: a brief history of the work and the context of library analytics services in the UK (and internationally). A description of the approach adopted by the project, and the vision and goals of the project. Exploration of the challenges associated with the project. Outline of the implications of the project and the resultant service. , – This paper will report on the initial findings of the project, which will run from January to December 2013. In particular it will consider the issues surfaced through the close engagement with the academic library community (through the projects community advisory and planning group) and the institutional early adopters around data gathering and analysis. , – Data accumulated in one context has the potential to inform decisions and interventions elsewhere. While there are a number of recognised and well-understood use cases for library analytics these tend to revolve around usage and collection management. Yet, the potential of a shared analytics service is in uncovering those links and indicators across diverse data sets. The paper will consider a number of practical impacts: performance – benchmarking, student attainment and research productivity; design – fine tuning services, personalised support; trends – research landscape, student marketplace, utilisation of resources. The case study will explore these practical implications for libraries and what they mean for the future of the library within the academy. , – The paper will present a case study of a unique service that currently fills an important gap within the library analytics space. The paper will focus on the services potential to transform both the way the library works and how it is perceived by its users, as well as its role and relationship within the broader institution.

By Fred Trotter Who owns a patient's health information? ·The patient to whom it refers? ·The health provider that created it? ·The IT specialist who has the greatest control over it? The notion of ownership is inadequate for health information. For instance, no one has an absolute right to...

“Increasingly, corporate officers find themselves struggling to decipher subtle social norms and make ethical choices that are more befitting of philosophers than business managers or lawyers.”

by Jonathan H. King & Neil M. Richards If you develop software or manage databases, you’re probably at the point now where the phrase “Big Data” makes you roll...

Thoughtful debriefing on the Facebook study and what we can learn from the backlash.

"You can have anonymous data or you can have open science, but you can't have both."

On social media sites, teens protect their privacy, transmit hidden messages and even hijack advertisers’ algorithms.