[open-government] Legal issues of linked data-different from open data?

[María Täng Palma]

Hello Toby,

Thank you for your answer!

That was actually my line of thought when I was reading about linked data. All the examples I found in the web explaining what linked data is always use a "person" and all the interrelations one can get about that certain person when in the web of linked data. With all the data be interlinked, cross-referenced and finally put in context, privacy is at a high risk. For another side, linked data seems to be the best way to publish PSI in a machine readable format, since linked data provides data "in a
regular and well-defined structure," and the most structured the data, the easier
for machines and people to re-use it. 

This seems to be the tendency for the future. So how will we be able to combine those things? ...

Best regards,
María



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+46 76 231 9427mjpp7 at hotmail.com



Subject: Re: [open-government] Legal issues of linked data-different from open data?
From: toby at law-democracy.org
Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2012 10:44:24 -0300
CC: open-government at lists.okfn.org
To: mjpp7 at hotmail.com

Hi María,
This is complex, and I don't claim to understand all of it
A key issue here relates to the extent to which linking data will raise legal confidentiality issues which do not arise in relation to disaggregated data.
In the area of national security, the mosaic theory has long been put forward (ie before powerful modern possibilities regarding electronically linked data), which says that even if certain pieces of information are not, individually, sensitive from a national security perspective, when you piece them together in the right mosaic, they do become sensitive. With modern linking technologies, we can create vastly more sophisticated mosaics, to continue the metaphor, and so the issue becomes far more 'threatening'. In recent times, I have more often seen the argument raised with respect to privacy (ie by mashing discrete databases you can penetrate through data anonymisation to link personal data to discrete individuals).