13 - Ethics of Open Source Data?

Tue, Feb 27

Guest Speaker: Karla Badillo-Urquiola

Today we're Joined by Karla Badillo-Urquiola, a human-computer interaction researcher, from the Computer Science Department to consider the ethical collection and use of open datasets. 

How can we know that the collection and use of a data set is ethical? Do subjects need to know about the use of their data? How can this be preserved in the era of the internet with associated big data and open-source data sets? What is a fair tradeoff between privacy and "free" use of internet services? Importantly, once unethical data is posted online, is it sufficient to just take the dataset down?

The learning goals for today's class are: 

• Identify what ethical bodies should be involved in preserving ethical data set creation and use, such as IRB and other research ethics groups.
• Consider what ethical questions are being raised by those working with open-source datasets.
• Ask whether it is sufficient to merely take down an unethical open-source dataset, or whether there is more that needs to be addressed. 

The slides for today's lecture can be found here.