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Profiling: From data to knowledge

The challenges of a crucial technology

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Abstract

Profiling is not about data but about knowledge. It provides a crucial technology in a society that is flooded with noise and information. Profiling is another term for sophisticated pattern recognition, and the enabling technology for Ambient Intelligence. It confronts us with a new type of inductive knowledge, inferred by means of automated algorithms. To the extent that decisions that impact our lives are based on such knowledge, we need to develop the means to make this knowledge accessible for individual citizens and provide them with the legal and technological tools to anticipate and contest such knowledge or challenge its application.

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Authors
  1. Mireille Hildebrandt
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Additional information

Dr Mireille Hildebrandt Senior Researcher at LSTS, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, teaching at Faculty of Law Erasmus University Rotterdam. Focus on issues of identity in constitutional democracy.

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Hildebrandt, M. Profiling: From data to knowledge. DuD 30, 548–552 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11623-006-0140-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11623-006-0140-3

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