Justice in the Information Area: Ethical Aspects of Big Data

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of justice in relation to the current situation, due to the emergence of a new source and method of processing information - Big Data. The author stands out several sources of the need to rethink the justice in information area: personal information and its private character coming into conflict with modern security requirements and practices of proactive monitoring; public movement for open data; unequal access to Big Data, which generates a new type of social injustice – the digital inequality, which is expressed in imparity because of inequalities in access to information technology; the issue of discrimination and the use of Big Data.The paradoxical consequence of the current situation of expansion of transparency of daily life of population is that the authorities responsible for monitoring remain invisible and unknown to those who are supervised. Movements for open data are interesting because they intersect with two modern trends: 1) datafication; 2) hacking and open source culture. Existing ecosystem around Big Data creates a new kind of digital division: the rich and the poor in Big Data sphere. Large data can be used as “small” in order to avoid mistakes of the past and give consideration to the minorities, because in an effort to make generalizations we risk to lose sight of the secondary, but important advantage of Big Data is the abundant representation of minorities.