Dangers of Open Government Data

One theme that came up often when discussing open government data was that there are certain risks involved in making the data available. As a class we thought of several examples where open data could have negative side effects. Some of these examples were sex offender data that does not differentiate between a child molester and a petty offender and traffic data causing more congested roads. In class we also mentioned the website Spokeo that gives personal data on people such as family information, house value, hobbies, and many other pieces of information. Curious as to how accurate the information was on the site I decided to search for my family members and friends. I found that a lot of the data was imprecise or erroneous for every person I searched. Although the false information on Spokeo does not pose a big threat because the site does not get a lot of traffic, I feel as though the website is a good example of the bad that could come from opening government data.

It is a natural tendency of people to accept the information they receive as fact without questioning its validity because of the extra effort it takes to verify the information is correct. As a result of this, false data can have a profound effect if many people accept it to be true. It is for this reason that I think open government data should be monitored after it is made available or only given to certain reliable individuals or groups. People with their own agendas could manipulate the data in a way that could present false information that would prove to be beneficial to them. If people saw the data and knew it came from the government, they would be even more prone to automatically accept the information as fact and make judgments based on falsified information. This would present a big problem for government and would be in opposition with the original reason why government data was made available. If the information was given to reliable groups, it could become a very powerful source of information and could positively contribute to democracy.