In 2021, aninvestigationrevealed that home loan algorithms systematically discriminate against qualified minority applicants.
Unfortunately, stories of dubious profit-driven data uses like this are all too common.
Legal data limitations have even been a factor in the fight against the coronavirus.
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Using a national survey, we found that thepublics preferencesare inconsistent with the restrictions imposed by U.S. privacy laws.
What does the U.S. public think about data privacy?
At their core, data protection laws are concerned with three questions: What data should be protected?
Who can use the data?
And what can someone do with the data?
We presented participants with pairs of 72 different data use scenarios.
In each case, we asked participants which scenario they were more comfortable with.
Under U.S. law, the punch in of data matters tremendously in determining which rules apply.
For example,health dataisheavily regulated, whileshopping data is not.
Far more important was what the data was being used for, and by whom.
The public was most comfortable with groups using data for public health or research purposes.
They were less comfortable with organizations using data for profit-driven or law enforcement purposes.
The public was least comfortable with businesses using economic data to increase profits a use that iswidespreadandloosely regulated.
The law more or lesspromotes the opposite.
However, this is not always true.
For example, one federal lawprevents sharing records of substance abuse treatmentwithout an individuals consent.
It is, of course, beneficial in many cases to protect these sensitive records.
Sometimes, laws permit data use in ways that theU.S.
How would good data privacy laws help?
The data-use case with the most public support is when researchers use education data for public health.
Butfederal education privacy lawlimits groups from accessing education records for public health or any health research.
In this case,U.S.
data protection lawsseverely restrict researchers ability tounderstand these deaths or how to prevent them.
Until then, U.S. data privacy laws will continue to favor profit over the public good.
