[open-government] OGD principles : Completeness versus Primacy

Mon Feb 4 15:56:51 UTC 2013

On Mon, Feb 04, 2013 at 02:58:11PM +0000, Hare, Jason wrote:
> I know that privacy issues tend to be cultural in nature but I would like to see the OKFN and ODG add some language around disclosure of citizen identity. Though in the US requests for information can disclose the identity of a citizen, I do not believe that an open data portal should expose a citizen's name or address in association with a single data set or through cross linked data sets.
> 
> I see England has expended some effort toward having a national policy on this issue. The US is more fragmented and different jurisdictions have different standards.
> 
> I would like to have an authoritative guideline. Since our open data initiative is based on the principles outlined in the OKFN Open Data Handbook and guidelines on this issue would be welcomed.

i'd like to point out the doctrine of "utilize public data, protect private
data". A rule of thumb for the barrier between the two there's a quote
attributed to Benkler: "privacy=protection of weak from scrutiny by powerful.
Transparency=exposure of powerful to scrutiny by weak." 

Javier Ruiz from the Open Rights Group has done a lot of research on this
topic in the last few years.

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