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Amnesia – High-Accuracy Data Anonymization

amnesia.openaire.eu

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Re: Amnesia – High-Accuracy Data Anonymization

#81

Post by lelandbatey »

Aerroon wrote: post #79
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Fair warning: anonymization is a hard problem. It is never easy, and you'd be surprised how many bits can leak out of what you thought was properly anonymized data. If you are using data for test purposes please use generated data, not anonymized data. This has the additional advantage that there is no potential path for live data to end up on a developers machine. added in edit: And also realize that just using a se…

Earlier this year we saw articles published about the finding of an Earth-sized rogue planet in our galaxy. The way it was discovered is remarkable. A telescope was looking at a distant star, then the star seemingly brightened over a period of 42 minutes. And that was basically it. When a massive object passes between a distant star and an Earth-based observer the light coming from the star gets deflected and focused…

Indeed, the ability to very accurately infer lots from very small amount of data is something I've long though of as the "Sherlock Holmes" problem. If there's just a few people with the ability to deduce lots of things, then they can be amusing and offer some limited utility, like Sherlock Holmes.

Computers are powerful enough though, and people clever enough, that everyone can now have a Sherlock Holmes in their pocket. And large corporations can have smarts far beyond Sherlock Holmes. So what once was a "eh, there's no rule against it, if you have the information the smart guy should be able to use it", is now a case of "oh dang, hmmm maybe civilization is built on the idea that not everyone is Sherlock Holmes."

Maybe this should have been my own blog post somewhere, but anyway, it's one of the many new conundrums of our time.

Re: Amnesia – High-Accuracy Data Anonymization

#82

Post by qchris »

lelandbatey wrote: post #81
Aerroon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earlier this year we saw articles published about the finding of an Earth-sized rogue planet in our galaxy. The way it was discovered is remarkable. A telescope was looking at a distant star, then the star seemingly brightened over a period of 42 minutes. And that was basically it. When a massive object passes between a distant star and an Earth-based observer the light coming from the star gets deflected and focused…

Indeed, the ability to very accurately infer lots from very small amount of data is something I've long though of as the "Sherlock Holmes" problem. If there's just a few people with the ability to deduce lots of things, then they can be amusing and offer some limited utility, like Sherlock Holmes. Computers are powerful enough though, and people clever enough, that everyone can now have a Sherlock Holmes in their poc…

I, for one, would be very interested in reading a more in-depth exploration of this idea, and would encourage you to write and publish that blog post.

Re: Amnesia – High-Accuracy Data Anonymization

#83

Post by ska »

tingletech wrote: post #76
jacquesm wrote: post #5

Fair warning: anonymization is a hard problem. It is never easy, and you'd be surprised how many bits can leak out of what you thought was properly anonymized data. If you are using data for test purposes please use generated data, not anonymized data. This has the additional advantage that there is no potential path for live data to end up on a developers machine. added in edit: And also realize that just using a se…

How are you going to do COVID-19 research with generated test data?

jacquesm was talking about test purposes, which is a different problem.

Re: Amnesia – High-Accuracy Data Anonymization

#84

Post by selestify »

qchris wrote: post #82
lelandbatey wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, the ability to very accurately infer lots from very small amount of data is something I've long though of as the "Sherlock Holmes" problem. If there's just a few people with the ability to deduce lots of things, then they can be amusing and offer some limited utility, like Sherlock Holmes. Computers are powerful enough though, and people clever enough, that everyone can now have a Sherlock Holmes in their poc…

I, for one, would be very interested in reading a more in-depth exploration of this idea, and would encourage you to write and publish that blog post.

Seconded

Re: Amnesia – High-Accuracy Data Anonymization

#85

Post by Toutouxc »

Geminidog wrote: post #49

Insensitive name to people actually suffering from amnesia, (me).

I'm a grown up man with a shoe size of 40 (8). Is the 2018 movie Smallfoot insensitive towards me?

I mean, I don't enjoy hearing about your suffering and I certainly don't wish it upon you, but why would you care about the name? Do you think that people somehow treat amnesia sufferers with less respect when they're exposed to the name in a context that's not explicitly serious and negative?

Re: Amnesia – High-Accuracy Data Anonymization

#86

Post by jacquesm »

lelandbatey wrote: post #81
Aerroon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earlier this year we saw articles published about the finding of an Earth-sized rogue planet in our galaxy. The way it was discovered is remarkable. A telescope was looking at a distant star, then the star seemingly brightened over a period of 42 minutes. And that was basically it. When a massive object passes between a distant star and an Earth-based observer the light coming from the star gets deflected and focused…

Indeed, the ability to very accurately infer lots from very small amount of data is something I've long though of as the "Sherlock Holmes" problem. If there's just a few people with the ability to deduce lots of things, then they can be amusing and offer some limited utility, like Sherlock Holmes. Computers are powerful enough though, and people clever enough, that everyone can now have a Sherlock Holmes in their poc…

33 bits... that's all you need.

Re: Amnesia – High-Accuracy Data Anonymization

#88

Post by ska »

smarx007 wrote: post #63
La1n wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

k-anonymity is often only applied to "pseudoidentifiers", if you have the original dataset it'd be trivial to reverse k-anonymity applied that way. For example someone's blood pressure isn't considered an identifying variable, and would not need to be anonymised (should not too, to keep data utility high), however this would make linking against the original dataset trivial.

You are right, time series data like BPM over time does not lend itself to anonymization nicely, the provider most likely will have to ask the user organizations what kind of measures (features) they need and return an average (if that's what the receiving organisation was after) that itself can be k-anonymized.

Averaged time series are very different than individual ones.

This is a deep problem; it's basically unavoidable in e.g. medical research - the very factors you want to study may well be potentially identifying. The only way to address this is to balance the potential utility of the research against the potential impact of the information.

Re: Amnesia – High-Accuracy Data Anonymization

#89

Post by jacobr1 »

privacylawthrow wrote: post #14

For data to be anonymous under GDPR, it is not enough that individuals cannot be identified from the anonymized data set. If individuals can be identified when the anonymous data set is compared with the source data set, the anonymized data is not "anonymous". For data to be truly anonymous under GDPR. there must be no other additional data that would allow for reidentification. If there is any other data that, when…

Google's Pair group has a great explainer here: https://pair.withgoogle.com/explorables/anonymization/

Re: Amnesia – High-Accuracy Data Anonymization

#90

Post by Geminidog »

Toutouxc wrote: post #85
Geminidog wrote: post #49

Insensitive name to people actually suffering from amnesia, (me).

I'm a grown up man with a shoe size of 40 (8). Is the 2018 movie Smallfoot insensitive towards me? I mean, I don't enjoy hearing about your suffering and I certainly don't wish it upon you, but why would you care about the name? Do you think that people somehow treat amnesia sufferers with less respect when they're exposed to the name in a context that's not explicitly serious and negative?

The same logic can be applied to black people and the n-word. Shall I name a product after the n-word with no harm intended or being explicitly serious or negative? Does that make it right? No.

You may not be offended by the word "smallfoot" but that's just you. You can't make that judgment for black people and the n-word anymore then you can make that judgment for the word "amnesia" and the entire community of amnesiacs.

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