Privacy and Big Data: Who can access my data? Who owns my data?

Big Data at a societal scale provide a powerful microscope, which together with Social Mining – the ability of discovering knowledge from these data – can help us understand many complex socio-economic phenomena. Sure, this new wave has profound repercussions on many ethically sensitive issues, including privacy and data protection, data ownership and exploitation, transparency. In our globally interconnected world, we cannot afford to miss the opportunity disclosed by big data, but within an ethical and technical framework that allows for knowledge to become a safe, public good.