Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform • Hacker News Board

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#91

Post by splistud » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

xpe wrote: post #73

elliekelly wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> privacy-preserving data collection system I hate this. Viscerally. Why, why, WHY does every “privacy first” system, platform, whatever, start with the presumption that some people should get your data and it’s just a matter of vetting the “good” groups from the “bad” groups. No. That isn’t privacy. No one should get my data. And it’s ridiculous that all of these companies try to position their data grabbing project…

I understand this is a sensitive area, and I understand that reasonable people have good reasons to be concerned. But it seems that you are directing your frustrations at Mozilla unfairly. I find this to be a good definition of privacy: > Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. - Wikipedia From what I've read,…

Part of the problem with large internet platforms is that parts of 'my data' is inextricably linked to 'your data', even to the extent that 'my data' only exists on some platforms as data points in 'your data'. In that sense any opt-in choice given to another is yet another privacy breach on their 'contacts' for example.

I've seen the opinion expressed that part of the reason society allows this type of surveillance is that so many members of our society don't understand the details or scope. If true, whatever discussions we have about this should include the idea that we're proposing to increase the scope of the problem while researching it.

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#92

Post by Ensorceled » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote: post #84

nebulous1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I haven't read beyond the linked page but my take is that it doesn't do anything about the data that you're already "sharing", but provides an additional mechanism for you to share data with specific parties in a controlled manner. All this seems reasonable if that's the case, but the page is misselling it.

> I haven't read beyond the linked page Then you haven’t yet properly informed yourself. > All this seems reasonable if that's the case, but the page is misselling it. There are limits to how much info you can fit into one page. Marketing pages are built in such a way that they guide you to where the detailed pages are.

>> I haven't read beyond the linked page

> Then you haven’t yet properly informed yourself.

Then why have the linked page. If it's literally not informative enough than it's just a poorly written press release.

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#93

Post by xpe » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #76

Whenever someone says they want to study anything relating to "misinformation", it's almost a guarantee they're looking to solve human problems with technical solutions. Oh look: "Rally has the potential to help address societal problems we could not solve before." No, I don't think it does. Especially when the first thing you tout is a study on "misinformation about COVID". The fact that American's are locked in a b…

> Whenever someone says they want to study anything relating to "misinformation", it's almost a guarantee they're looking to solve human problems with technical solutions.

What in your experience motivates you to say this?

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#94

Post by jonathanmayer » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #86

jonathanmayer wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not aware of any public announcement or explanation. Which is... probably intentional, since Google is removing a headline privacy feature from Chrome.

How did you learn about it? By studying the code?

Our team looked closely at the Google, Microsoft, and Apple local differential privacy implementations when building Rally. It helped that we have friends who worked on RAPPOR.

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#95

Post by elliekelly » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

xpe wrote: post #73

elliekelly wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> privacy-preserving data collection system I hate this. Viscerally. Why, why, WHY does every “privacy first” system, platform, whatever, start with the presumption that some people should get your data and it’s just a matter of vetting the “good” groups from the “bad” groups. No. That isn’t privacy. No one should get my data. And it’s ridiculous that all of these companies try to position their data grabbing project…

I understand this is a sensitive area, and I understand that reasonable people have good reasons to be concerned. But it seems that you are directing your frustrations at Mozilla unfairly. I find this to be a good definition of privacy: > Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. - Wikipedia From what I've read,…

Sorry, I definitely did not put as much thought into my comment as I should have and I left out the critical piece of information that really ticked me off. I'm one of the nerds who actually reads the privacy documents and Rally's privacy policy[1] has a section titled "How We Use Your Information" that includes:

> improving Mozilla’s existing products and services

> creating and developing new products

All of the marketing copy is about "donating" your data to important research and how "Big Tech has built its success by exploiting your data." Meanwhile Mozilla is doing the exact same thing they're criticizing "big tech" for doing. Tucked away in the fine print is the fact that your data _isn't_ just going to be used for research studies, it's going to be exploited by yet another for-profit tech company. They've just put a nice warm and fuzzy do-gooder wrapper on it.

If Rally is transparent about how your data is used like they claim to be they would either (1) not use your data in that way and exclusively allow the data to be used for research, as advertised, or (2) make it abundantly obvious it will be used that way.

[1]https://rally.mozilla.org/privacy-policy/index.html

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#96

Post by xpe » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

splistud wrote: post #91

xpe wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand this is a sensitive area, and I understand that reasonable people have good reasons to be concerned. But it seems that you are directing your frustrations at Mozilla unfairly. I find this to be a good definition of privacy: > Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. - Wikipedia From what I've read,…

Part of the problem with large internet platforms is that parts of 'my data' is inextricably linked to 'your data', even to the extent that 'my data' only exists on some platforms as data points in 'your data'. In that sense any opt-in choice given to another is yet another privacy breach on their 'contacts' for example. I've seen the opinion expressed that part of the reason society allows this type of surveillance…

Yes, calling out linkage as a key challenge for data privacy is very important.

To dig in one level deeper... Have you looked into privacy-preserving record linkage (PPRL) or similar ideas? (I have not, but I'm interested.)

> The process of linking records without revealing any sensitive or confidential information about the entities represented by these records is known as privacy-preserving record linkage (PPRL). > Source: "Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage". > DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63962-8_17-1

See also: "A taxonomy of privacy-preserving record linkage techniques" at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03064...

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#97

Post by jonathanmayer » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

FlyingLawnmower wrote: post #85

jonathanmayer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with the only privacy guarantees being that the data is encrypted during transport, and a "promise" that they will run internal audits to make sure private data isn't released from their servers. There's much more than that, including: privacy and security review before a study launches, a data minimization requirement, a sandboxed data analysis environment with strict access controls, and IRB oversight for academi…

Have you thought about using central/global differential privacy (which tends to have much less noise) on the "high level aggregates" or "aggregated datasets" that persist after the research study ends? E.g. from the FAQ: "We do intend to release aggregated data sets in the public good to foster an open web. When we do this, we will remove your personal information and try to disclose it in a way that minimizes the r…

> Have you thought about using central/global differential privacy (which tends to have much less noise) on the "high level aggregates" or "aggregated datasets" that persist after the research study ends?

Yes. Central differential privacy is a very promising direction for datasets that result from studies on Rally.

> It's a little worrying to think that this disclosure process might be done with no formal privacy protection. See the Netflix competition, AOL search dataset, Public Transportation in Victoria, etc. case studies of how non-formal attempts at anonymization can fail users.

I've done a little re-identification research, and my faculty neighbor at Princeton CITP wrote the seminal Netflix paper, so we take this quite seriously.

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#98

Post by 9wzYQbTYsAIc » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

splistud wrote: post #91

xpe wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand this is a sensitive area, and I understand that reasonable people have good reasons to be concerned. But it seems that you are directing your frustrations at Mozilla unfairly. I find this to be a good definition of privacy: > Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. - Wikipedia From what I've read,…

Part of the problem with large internet platforms is that parts of 'my data' is inextricably linked to 'your data', even to the extent that 'my data' only exists on some platforms as data points in 'your data'. In that sense any opt-in choice given to another is yet another privacy breach on their 'contacts' for example. I've seen the opinion expressed that part of the reason society allows this type of surveillance…

> In that sense any opt-in choice given to another is yet another privacy breach on their 'contacts' for example.

That is a non-sequitor, when we are discussing opting-in to social science research.

Rally is not a social network platform. It is a social science platform. There is no reason for it to be directly, as a platform, concerned with your contacts.

Per their FAQ:

> We abide by a series of principles known as Lean Data Practices. Lean Data means that we collect just the data we need, and do everything we can to protect what we collect. Studies only collect data that is essential to creating a broader understanding of a research topic.

Institutional Review Boards, privacy policies, and the various contractual agreements between parties operating and building the Rally research platform would be held to task by scientific principles of treating participants humanely and ethically.

If an IRB deemed that it was unethical to conduct a study due to the design implications indicating that data could be obtained that did not originate from informed consent, then that study would not be able to be conducted and the research design would have to be modified to correct itself or that specific research methodology would be considered to be generally unethical by the wider scientific community, just the same as the scientific community deems it unethical to do genetic experiments on unwilling human subjects.

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#99

Post by caseyohara » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

hndirect wrote: post #65

Sorry if this is too off topic, but is there a name for the art style they are using in the illustrations? It seems to be all over corporate sites these days.

That design style is called "Corporate Memphis" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis) and you're right it is pervasive.

Here's a YouTube video about it if you're curious: Why do "Corporate Art styles" Feel Fake? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFb7BOI_QFc

Re: Rally, a novel privacy-first data sharing platform

#100

Post by 9wzYQbTYsAIc » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #95

xpe wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand this is a sensitive area, and I understand that reasonable people have good reasons to be concerned. But it seems that you are directing your frustrations at Mozilla unfairly. I find this to be a good definition of privacy: > Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. - Wikipedia From what I've read,…

Sorry, I definitely did not put as much thought into my comment as I should have and I left out the critical piece of information that really ticked me off. I'm one of the nerds who actually reads the privacy documents and Rally's privacy policy[1] has a section titled "How We Use Your Information" that includes: > improving Mozilla’s existing products and services > creating and developing new products All of the ma…

> If Rally is transparent about how your data is used

If Rally was not transparent about this, then you would not have seen that and would not have gotten emotionally triggered by it.

But given that you’ve identified a visceral opposition to that, you should consider not opting-in to that particular study.