[MyData & Open Data] article29 dp working party: Opinion 05/2014 on Anonymisation Techniques

Mon Apr 28 18:10:17 UTC 2014

howdy, excellent intro and assessment of anonymization techniques and their
known weaknesses:
http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/article-29/documentation/opinion-recommendation/files/2014/wp216_en.pdf

some key points:

'identification' 
> ... not only means the possibility of retrieving a
> person's name and/or address, but also includes potential
> identifiability by singling out, linkability and inference.

pseudonymised data
> ... cannot be equated to anonymised information as they
> continue to allow an individual data subject to be singled out and
> linkable across different data sets . Pseudonymity is likely to allow
> for identifiability, and therefore stays inside the scope of the legal
> regime of data protection. This is especially relevant in the context
> of scientific, statistical or historical research.

page 11 explains singling out, linkability and inference.

the theme is that there is no silver bullet, and gives good examples
for vulnerability of each technique.

-- 
otr fp: https://www.ctrlc.hu/~stef/otr.txt