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

[Toby Mendel]

I think we need to study carefully the issue of exactly how much risk linked data really does pose to privacy and other protected interests (like national security). Linking data is not my area of expertise but, as I said, I have not been impressed with the (admittedly few) studies I have seen on this and at least some real experts I have talked to do not believe it really is such a threat. 

Once we have a better understanding of the (real) threat, we can get into a more scientific cost benefit analysis of the sort you posit below. What are the costs of not making data available vs. the costs to privacy. I am not sure that it makes so much difference how the data is released, because I believe that technology is increasingly able to take rigid data (.pdfs) and turn it into machine readable formats. Structuring might be more of an issue, although again once you have it in machine readable formats you can start to restructure, albeit with some effort, and certainly granularity (ie how detailed and disaggregated the data is) is important.

Toby

___________________________________
Toby Mendel
Executive Director
 
Centre for Law and Democracy
toby at law-democracy.org
Tel:  +1 902 431-3688
Fax: +1 902 431-3689
www.law-democracy.org




On 2 Nov 2012, at 11:19, María Täng Palma wrote:

> 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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