A known danger of misuse is preventive intervention; by analyzing online behavioral data, deviant and possibly suspicious behavior can be recognized in time. Often used in the hunt for terrorists. The suspect is attacked by a drone or customs officer, but also law-abiding citizens were wrongly arrested. What was the charge? Are you planning to commit a crime?
In the insurance world, too, the use of big data can lead to ethical discussions: should you exclude groups or have a more expensive policy paid for based on statistics that big data thinks entail a risk? The discussion that is now taking place in America is all about this danger.
the quants (see last week, the qualitative analysts ) loose on the telephone registrations of Verizon. According to the Washington Post, the NSA and FBI would have access to big data tunisia mobile phone number list from AOL, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Skype, Youtube and Paltalk. All this under the code name PRISM.
Danger 2: Mass data in the wrong hands
Another danger is that mass data ends up in the wrong hands. In 1943, data from the Dutch civil registry ended up in the hands of the Germans, which made it very easy to track down the Jews. It was an example avant la lettre .