Hey Betre,

I enjoyed your reading. My comment deals with the matter from a more general perspective: the issue of profiling to built up a comprehensive image of the user touches upon how his realization of his interests in anonymity will be diminished by a profiling / data mining operation. Indeed, the amount of privacy a person enjoys vis-à-vis another person or organization is partly a function of the degree to which the latter is able to draw together data on disparate aspects of his activities. It follows that, the more such data are able to be drawn together, the more comprehensive is the profile that can be validly inferred for the data and the less privacy is enjoyed by the data subject. This diminishing of privacy without the consent of the subject is detrimental to his legitimate interest in informational self-determination, but also may pose further threats on a macro-social level for a pluralist and democratic society.

Still, should we apply privacy protection principles such as the purpose limitation principle, the principle of data minimization and proportionality require, then every potential profiler should limit himself in collecting an amount of personal data wich limited to what is necessary to achieve the purpose for which the data are gathered and processed. This would most probably have an impact on the efficacy of profiling / data mining techniques by restricting the amount of information upon which profiles can be generated.

What I mean to say here is that for any legitimate data-mining activity performed out there (and by legitimate I would qualify any processing of personal data done with the subject's consent), the amount of information that is allowed to be gathered is (should be) the absolute minimum, which, in turn, jeopardizes the efficiency of the data mining operation for which the data was collected in the first place.

-- NikolaosVolanis - 11 May 2010