
When your data science activities can send you to prison - vincentg64
http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/doing-illegal-data-science-without-knowing-it
======
tgflynn
This is a very strange article.

The first set of activities would usually be considered to belong to the
fields of cryptography or information security, not data science per se. The
author doesn't distinguish between export controls and classification. The
issue of export controls on this type of technology may be an issue but it's
something that's been discussed elsewhere and I think is fairly well known.
I've never heard of any encryption work that wasn't funded by the government
being classified. I think there is legislation that allows the government to
classify patents, even if they weren't developed with government support or
using classified information, but as far as I know it's very rarely used and
the only cases I've heard of involve nuclear technology.

As for the other items, "data science" can be applied to any activity,
including ones which are illegal for various reasons (like running an
insurance company without respecting the relevant legislation and
regulations). That's a far cry from claiming that doing "data science" itself,
ie. developing algorithms, analyzing data, etc. can be illegal. If the author
has any evidence that this claim is true in the US, he doesn't present it.

