Some Privacy Issues in Knowledge Discovery: The OECD Personal Privacy Guidelines

  • Authors:
  • Daniel E. O'Leary

  • Affiliations:
  • -

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Expert: Intelligent Systems and Their Applications
  • Year:
  • 1995

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Abstract

The OECD has specific guidelines pertaining to data privacy that directly affect those performing knowledge discovery generally, and those who use so-called "personal data" in particular. Several countries have generated principles to protect individuals from the potential invasion of privacy that data collection and retrieval poses. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has provided probably the best known set of guidelines. A number of countries have adopted these guidelines as statutory law, in whole or in part. The OECD has specific guidelines pertaining to data privacy that directly affect those performing knowledge discovery generally, and those who use so-called "personal data" in particular. In this article I will address such questions as What are the implications of the existing privacy guidelines, especially those of the OECD, for knowledge discovery? What are the limitations of these guidelines? How do the restrictions on knowledge discovery about individuals affect knowledge discovery on groups? How do legal systems influence knowledge discovery? I hope that the answers I pose to these and other related issues will be helpful in generating a larger dialogue on this important subject.There has been relatively little investigation into the privacy and security issues relevant to knowledge discovery, in particular, and intelligent systems in general. Developers have proposed and used intrusion-detection systems as the basis of security systems designed to protect privacy. Typically, intrusion-detection systems determine if a user is an intruder or a legitimate user, generally by way of various internal system profiles. Earlier studies of security issues in intelligent systems included issues of privacy and the security of system knowledge. There has been some concern about knowledge discovery as a different kind of threat to database security as well.