Regardless, there is legitimate value in the collection, cleaning, interlinking, and presentation of existing data. How that is interpreted by the law is one thing but merely because the data came from a variety of other public/private sources doesn't mean it derived all of its value externally.
The data is obviously valuable, but they don't necessarily deserve a monopoly on that data, since that data primarily belongs to the users who created the data; so while it's understandable that organizations want to restrict that data, we have no obligation (moral or otherwise) to respect that desire.
Of course it's useful, and that argument is pretty compelling.
But what you need to consider is not responsible use of the collected data, but the flipside, irresponsible, illegal use of the data by individuals who have access.
I agree. There should always be a good justification provided for the data collection, as well as a description of safeguards against malicious use and also a way to verify if the data is indeed used as intended and brings in value. This should be a minimum standard to hold a government to.
I think this is less a philosophical argument than a legal one. If a court can prove that you explicitly owned the illegal data in its raw format, and used that to generate something (even if it has secondary value), they should be free to prosecute in my opinion. That includes searching through and highlighting data that already exists in the wild such as large prime numbers. Presumably showing statistics of how often random data would decode to someone's credit card number would prove this beyond reasonable doubt.
The fact all data exists 'in nature' - while interesting, is not something I think should override the intent of data laws.
Yes, and? What about all of the data that is kept not owing to legal/regulatory requirements? That's the key issue here, not some trite truism about regulatory record-keeping requirements.
I imagine it is not settled law, but there's a clear argument to be made that regardless of the difficulty in curating the data set, it's still a data set.
Can it be licensed and sold. Yes, surely. Is it proper to pretend an open source license is sufficient protection, probably not.
The ethics of data collection in the age of people sharing all sorts of information with Google, Facebook, etc, are not a clear cut thing.
Moreover, it's not meaningless whether its illegal or not. Indeed, it makes all the difference in the world. Laws can be changed if we don't like their outcomes--a government that's ignoring the law is something else entirely.
Just because access to the data is secured and legal (according to present or future law), doesn't mean it's not being used for reprehensible purposes. Plenty of abuse was and still is legal.
Additionally, in order to be 'ethical' by any means, they still have to collect the data in the first place. Regardless of actual intentions around ethical/defined practices, that always leaves the possibility for someone else to access that data and do unintended things with it.
With respect to the law enforcement example, the access there is to non-public data. That seems like an essential difference to me, but perhaps you're citing this situation in preparation for your third paragraph.
In your third paragraph, I think I'm seeing a dilemma. I don't understand how jumping through the hoops changes the potential for abuse.
Let's say 30 people go to the county records office and get the data. They all sign an agreement of some kind. 30 people now have (presumably) exactly the same data set. One of the 30 violates the agreement and publishes it anonymously on the Internet. The data is now "in the wild" and any potential for abuse that it held is now up for grabs.
I recognize that I may be missing something, but if I am, I'm not able to see it. I might need more coffee. ;-)
What possible good can come from collecting a bunch of private data that wasn't intended to be collected by a third party? They're not collecting it for nothing. If you think it's okay to collect the data you must consider what can be done with it.
Catching criminals? Sure, but that's very minor compared to the real harm that data can do to a bunch of relatively harmless people. Like using a gun to kill a housefly. The chances of you hitting the housefly are very low, but the chances of you harming a bunch of innocent people while trying are likely.
> the raw information contained in it shouldn't be?
That's correct. Supreme Court decision. Said decision is the reason why you occasionally read news articles about the U.S. considering some form of database protection laws - to make those databases protectable under law (and therefore to make this lawsuit legitimate).
reply