Privacy in mining crime data from social Media: A South African perspective

Social Media has changed the way we communicate as friends, family and citizens. Social media has allowed individuals with shared interest, regardless of geographical location, to form communities and discussion forums to share tips and tricks of their trade. As a result, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have become major sources of information for current events and community interests. In this paper we discuss privacy issues related to mining South African crime and public safety incidents from social media posts. The paper touches on matters related to ownership of social media data, privacy preservation challenges when several types of data from different sources can be integrated as well as legal protection of the processing of personal information. Finally, this paper will discuss ethical issues that arise when the data reveals information such as witnesses to a crime.