Big Data has sparked great interest in practice. Public and private sector organizations of all kinds are making huge investments in Big Data in the well-justified belief that innovations in data analytics can bring enormous benefits in such areas as public health and safety, economic competitiveness and consumer welfare. However, a key aspect of the debate on Big Data is the potential for privacy breach by corporations, malicious individuals, and governments. The workshop's overall goal is to develop a forward-looking research agenda on how to overcome the tradeoff between Big Data and privacy to effectively pursue the potential of big data without sacrificing people's individual privacy rights. The workshop examines how privacy may be impacted in the Big Data era with emphasis on implications for individuals, firms, as well as government and non-profit organizations. By inviting prominent participants from several diverse perspectives, including law, social, behavioral, economic and computer sciences, and business, the goal is to foster a cross-disciplinary approach into understanding and mitigating the tradeoff between big data and privacy. The workshop aims to enable big data to transform organizations, markets, government, the private and public sector, and society in general, while respecting people's rights to their private information. The workshop seeks to advance a multi-disciplinary scientific inquiry on big data and privacy and aims to serve as a bridge for inter-disciplinary collaboration among academia, industry, and government with emphasis on academic rigor and real-world relevance.
WORKSHOP: PRIVACY IN AN ERA OF BIG DATA-Temple University; May 20-21, 2015