Bruce Schneier points to an amazing article by Tom Owad, “Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists”. In it, Owad reveals how simple it can be to use data mining techniques to profile people based on their public Amazon wish-lists, especially focusing on those who want books deemed “dangerous” by the government.
Michael Zimmer, PhD, is a digital privacy and data ethics scholar at Marquette University
MichaelZimmer.org 