[MyData & Open Data] distinctions between personal and open

[stef]

On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 11:54:42AM +0000, Mark Elliot wrote:
> Firstly, Context is rather more than simply the publishing/not publishing distinction you have to consider what data environment the data exists on.

i disagree, the question is whether to collect data in the first place.
deanonimization is only one threat, the other is the uncontrolled leaking of
data, look at the Manning case, 3 million people having access to classified
information, and only one public leak? what do you think, how many criminal
leaks were there? consider the vacuuming tactics of the NSA, we collect and
store everything.

data-minimization is key, as long as you do not collect it cannot leak, and it
cannot deanonymized. of course this only applies to data on persons who hold
no power over society.

> Something that could be anonymised in one data environment but not In another. Clearly full publication is the most liberal environment therefore requires the highest level of caution.
> 
> Secondly, Ohms scenario is unrealistic. He uses differential privacy which assumes that intruder has all but one of the pieces of information in the data set and that all the information that he has is 100% convergent with that in the data. 

why is this unrealistic for a determined adversary? as far as i see the NSA
allows many of it's allies (NATO, GCHQ, BND) almost uncontrolled access to its
data, i guess it's a bit more than 3million users that have access to this.

> Put this another way: Ohms paper was rather like the guy who rushes into a room full of car designers and screams "everyone... listen up... we have just discovered that if you drive cars into a brick wall at 100 miles and hour then people get hurt, we have to stop building them!!!!" 

the analogy is not quite fitting i believe. in your example the victim is
acting on it's own when it's driving against the wall. in the data collection
case the victims are driven against the wall.

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