The Ethics of Big Data as a Public Good: Which Public? Whose Good?
Published August 2016
Linnet Taylor has written a useful paper on how corporations approach ‘donating’ their data to non-profit organisations. To do so, she looks at two case studies in which mobile network operators (Telenor and Orange) have shared Call Detail Records (CDRs) for nonprofit research projects.
She suggests that corporations are not refusing to share data to simply avoid risk, but are instead “navigating challenges...in nuanced, reflexive ways.” Moreover, she finds that they are helping to develop “new ethical approaches to data-sharing infrastructures and practices.” However, she warns against adopting a one-size-fits-all approach for sharing data:
You can’t standardise procedures for preventing harm: to make an accurate assessment, you need social and political knowledge of the scenario in which the data was collected. The procedures that are necessary also depend on whom the data is shared with, and in what form.
Existing procedures vary widely: Companies typically share data on a case-by-case basis with a variety of people, ranging from government security services to the company’s customers. Researchers, on the other hand, design projects that are tightly focused on one specific problem.
Taylor proposes that we should ultimately leave mobile operators to decide what to do with the mobile data they collect, because they have the best access to, and understanding of, the context in which they are operating - and because they will be inclined to protect their customers.
But this suggestion is based on the actions of two mobile network operators - would all mobile operators always act in the same way as Telenor and Orange? What about operators that are part-owned by governments, or are simply unaware of risks that the most marginalised groups are facing? She also notes that companies would prefer to control the data-sharing process, as it increases the data’s scarcity value and focuses any good publicity on them.