[Air-l] AOL Releases Search Logs from 500,000 Users

[Maciej Kos]

AOL apologizes for release of user search data

AOL apologized on Monday for releasing search log data on subscribers that had
been intended for use with the company's newly launched research site.

http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-6102793.html?tag=nefd.top



On Mon, 7 Aug 2006 11:02:26 -0400, Alex Halavais wrote
> What an extraordinarily tempting piece of research data. And so, the
> ethical question comes quickly to the fore:
> 
> Clearly, no Institutional Review Board would ever allow such a
> collection. Users had a reasonable expectation that their searches
> would not be recorded and openly distributed. (See, for example, the
> user looking to kill his wife:
> http://plentyoffish.wordpress.com/2006/08/07/aol-search-data-shows-
> users-planning-to-commit-murder/ . ) Moreover, the ability to link 
> searches of a given user makes this a potentially very revealing 
> data set. I don't think that the anonymization of user names is 
> enough to make this usable.
> 
> And yet, there it is. It's already out there, and as I said, very
> tempting. Is it ethical to make use of this already-collected data if
> your use substantially masks the private matters of these users. Any
> use I would make of the data would make it extremely unlikely that 
> any private information would be revealed--though the mere existence 
> of the public data set in some ways makes this moot.
> 
> The obvious parallel (Godwin's law notwithstanding) is the 
> controversy over using Nazi experimental data in medical research. 
> But it seems to me that there are some shades of grey here. AOL 
> Search is not a Nazi concentration camp, and it is worth noting that 
> an article based on the data has already appeared in peer-reviewed 
> conference proceedings. While I think that the distribution of their 
> search data without the clear permission of its users, either to the 
> public or to the government, is pretty clearly unethical, I don't 
> know that it makes this data poison fruit. Tainted, yes, poison, I 
> don't think so.
> 
> Finally, I wonder what AOL's move is now. They've pulled the plug on
> the page, but lots of people presumably have and will share the data.
> If AOL now revokes permission to use the data, what does that mean? 
> Do they own the data at this point? Providing and then pulling back data
> would set a terrible precedent.
> 
> (Blogged at http://alex.halavais.net/aol-data/ )
> 
> --
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> // Alexander C. Halavais
> // Social Architect
> // http://alex.halavais.net
> //
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