[MyData & Open Data] MyData-Open-Data Digest, Vol 2, Issue 5

Fri Mar 15 15:37:38 UTC 2013

Further to Reuben's link to Kieran O'Hara's report and Stef's reference to Paul
Ohm's excellent paper on the failures of anonymisation, I thought I'd just point
folks at some more research in this area - to which Dr O'Hara refers in his
report - namely, differential privacy:

 <http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/databaseprivacy/>
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/databaseprivacy/ 

The above provides an overview and links to deeper material, including Cynthia
Dwork's original paper:

http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/64346/dwork.pdf

Or a much shorter, accessible whitepaper:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/confirmation.aspx?id=35409

It should be noted that differential privacy is probably more useful as a metric
- how re-identifiable is a particular data release? - than as a 'solution' to
the tensions within privacy and open data, but it has actually resulted in some
usable technology - Privacy Integrated Query Language (PINQ) - which may prove
to be a positive step forward.

Cheers,

Phil

P.S. I don't work for Microsoft - it just happens to have done some pretty good
research in this area!

  _____  

From: mydata-open-data-bounces at lists.okfn.org
[mailto:mydata-open-data-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Reuben Binns
Sent: 15 March 2013 11:56
To: mydata-open-data at lists.okfn.org
Subject: Re: [MyData & Open Data] MyData-Open-Data Digest, Vol 2, Issue 5

Hi All,

I'm a PhD researcher at the University of Southampton, looking at personal data
and transparency.  It's great to see this group starting, thanks to Laura at the
OKFN and everyone who has joined so far.

I ran a panel session at last year's Open Knowledge Festival entitled 'Open data
and Personal Data' which may be of interest to everyone (which was actually
inspired by some comments Laura made at a conference on the Internet of Things
earlier that year). More info is available at 
http://okfestival.org/personal-data/ 

A video of the session is up on the OKFest website
http://bambuser.com/v/2991154

On the topic of anonymisation, Dr. Kieron O'Hara from my department has written
a very accessible report commissioned by the cabinet office.
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/272769/

I'm looking forward to future discussions on this list!

-Reuben

 <snip> 

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