Algorithm can pick out almost any American in supposedly anonymized databases
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Re: Algorithm can pick out almost any American in supposedly anonymized databases
#2[deleted]
Re: Algorithm can pick out almost any American in supposedly anonymized databases
#3The great contribution of Differential Privacy theory is to quantify just how little use you can get out of aggregate data before individuals become identifiable.
Unfortunately, Differential Privacy proofs can be used to justify applications which turn out to leak privacy when the proofs are shown to be incorrect after the fact, when the data is already out there and the damage already done.
Nevertheless, it is instructive just to see how perilously few queries can be answered before compromise occurs — putting the lie to the irresponsible idea of "anonymization".
Re: Algorithm can pick out almost any American in supposedly anonymized databases
#4The paper referenced in the article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10933-3
Re: Algorithm can pick out almost any American in supposedly anonymized databases
#5If people tell you they're collecting data for statistical purposes, then one of three things:
1. They should deliberately introduce noise into the raw data. Nazis with the raw census data can spend all month trying to find the two 40-something Jews that data says live on this island of 8400 people, but they were just noise. Or were they? No way to know.
2. Bucket everything and discard all raw data immediately. This hampers future analysis, so the buckets must be chosen carefully, but it is often enough for real statistical work, and often you could just collect data again later if you realise you needed different buckets.
3. They shouldn't collect _anything_ personally identifiable. Hard because this could be almost anything at all. If you're 180cm tall your height doesn't seem personally identifiable, but ask Sun Mingming. If you own a Honda Civic then model of car doesn't seem personally identifiable but ask somebody in a Rolls Royce Wraith Luminary...
Re: Algorithm can pick out almost any American in supposedly anonymized databases
#6The article title misses a bit of nuance from the paper which is specifically talking about re-identification.
e.g from the paper:
"We show that, as a male born on July 31, 1945 and living in Cambridge (02138), the information used by Latanya Sweeney at the time, William Weld was unique with a 58% likelihood (ξx = 0.58 and κx = 0.77), meaning that Latanya Sweeney’s re-identification had 77% chances of being correct. We show that, if his medical records had included number of children—5 for William Weld—, her re-identification would have had 99.8% chances of being correct!"
Re: Algorithm can pick out almost any American in supposedly anonymized databases
#7We are going to have to get used to and start to develop a legal and moral framework around the fact that it will soon be impossible to stay in the shadows.
Re: Algorithm can pick out almost any American in supposedly anonymized databases
#8If people tell you they're collecting data for statistical purposes, then one of three things: 1. They should deliberately introduce noise into the raw data. Nazis with the raw census data can spend all month trying to find the two 40-something Jews that data says live on this island of 8400 people, but they were just noise. Or were they? No way to know. 2. Bucket everything and discard all raw data immediately. This…
Nazis used the census because it was there. Were it not, they would have just went house to house - which they then regularly did anyway.
The antidote of oppression is not the Index statisticum prohibitorum, but quite the opposite, education, and in particular educating about how different each and every one of us is, and yet it doesn't take much to get along well.
Re: Algorithm can pick out almost any American in supposedly anonymized databases
#9I'm giving less and less of a fuck about this shit. Mostly because there's a point at which you refuse to be put on the run and don't want to hide.
So maybe this is where the fight begins. At some point people make up their mind about dying not being a very big deal, and to become masters of their fate.
To die on your feet, looking your accusers in the eye. Who would be so bold as to accuse me? Could I dare entertain the privilege to identify them?
Re: Algorithm can pick out almost any American in supposedly anonymized databases
#10I'm a programmer in the GP data analysis world. We use the term 'pseudonymization' for this kind of data. 'Anonymization' is used solely to refer to, say, 'the sum total of diabetes patients this practice has' (that would be anonymous patient data; it would not be anonymous relative to the GP office this refers to): Aggregated data that can no longer be reduced to a single individual at all.
The term raises questions: Okay, so, what does it mean? How 'pseudo' is psuedo? And that's the point: When you pseudonimize data, you must ask those questions and there is no black and white anymore.
My go-to example to explain this is very simple: Let's say we reduce birthdate info to just your birthyear, and geoloc info to just a wide area. And then I have an pseudonimized individual who is marked down as being 105 years old.
Usually there's only one such person.
I invite everybody who works in this field to start using the term 'pseudonimization'.