Databases Must Balance Privacy With Utility

Article published in ScienceDaily: Databases must balance privacy with utility, says professor

Agencies like the U.S. Census Bureau produce a voluminous amount of data, much of which is of tremendous value to social scientists and other researchers. But the data also includes personal information that, under the law, must be protected and could be harmful were it to fall into the wrong hands.

Thus, organizations that maintain such databases need to devise ways to protect individuals' privacy while preserving the value of the information to researchers, writes Carnegie Mellon University Statistics Professor George Duncan in a commentary in the Aug. 31 edition of the journal Science.

Duncan said traditional methods of "de-identifying" records, such as stripping away Social Security numbers or birthdates, are inadequate to safeguard privacy because a person who knows enough about the data pool could use other characteristics to identify individuals. Duncan, for example, is the only person who holds a Ph.D. in statistics and teaches in Carnegie Mellon's H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, so any data set that included that information, even with Duncan's name removed, could be used to determine his identity.

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European Data Protection Law

European Data Protection Law, Corporate Compliance and Regulation,Second Edition by Christopher Kuner (Oxford Press, 2007)

Text Source: Epic Bulletin

In the updated edition of his text, Kuner sets out the difficulty ofexpansion into EU markets for US businesses that have not taken themessage of data privacy protection seriously. US businesses intent onexploiting the information age through new EU markets or creating moreefficiency in existing European markets must effectively convert theirbusiness models to comply with EU data protection laws. The various EUdata directives create minimum standards that each member state mustthen adopt though the passage of new laws. However, this model doesallow member states to adopt stronger measures for data protection.There is a process for industries to establish self-regulatory codesunder Article 27(1) of the General Directive, but according to theauthor the process is so cumbersome that few industries have createdthem. He sees the process as taking too long to complete, and the"uncertain legal status" of the measures once adopted.

e-Smart 2007

e-Smart 2007 (8th edition)

An Empirical Approach to Understanding Privacy Valuation

An Empirical Approach to Understanding Privacy Valuation

It is a paper by Luc Wathieu who is an associate professor in the Marketing unit at Harvard Business School.

What do consumers value and why? Researchers on privacy remain stumped by a "privacy paradox." Consumers declare that they value privacy highly, yet do not take steps to guard it during transactions. At the same time, consumers feel unable to enact their preferences on privacy. Clearly, scholars need a more nuanced understanding of how consumers treat information privacy in complex situations. To test the hypothesis that there is a homo economicus behind privacy concerns, not just primal fear, Wathieu and Friedman conducted an experiment based on a real-world situation about the transmission of personal information in the context of car insurance. Their experiment was based on a previous case study about marketing processes that use membership databases of trusted associations (such as alumni associations) to channel targeted deals to members through a blend of direct mail and telemarketing. Key concepts include:

Contrary to some research, the chief privacy concern appears based on data use, not data itself.

There is consumer demand for social control that focuses on data use.

Sophisticated consumers care about economic context and indirect economic effects.

Full Working Paper Text

Stop REAL ID: Reject National Identification

Text source: Privacy Coalition website

45 organizations representing transpartisan, nonpartisan, privacy, consumer, civil liberty, civil rights, and immigrant organizations have joined to launch a national campaign to solicit public comments to stop the nation's first national ID system: REAL ID.

The groups joining in the anti-REAL ID campaign are concerned about the increased threat of counterfeiting and identity theft, lack of security to protect against unauthorized access to the document's machine readable content, increased cost to taxpayers, diverting of state funds intended for homeland security, increased costs for obtaining a license or state issued ID card, and because the REAL ID would create a false belief that it is secure and unforgeable.

This effort builds on the momentum that is signaling broad opposition to the REAL ID in the states. Montana has become the fifth state, following Maine, Idaho, Arkansas, and Washington, to prohibit cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security in implementing the REAL ID national identification system.

Under the Act, states and federal government would share access to a vast national database that could include images of birth certificates, marriage licenses, divorce papers, court ordered separations, medical records, and detailed information on the name, date of birth, race, religion, ethnicity, gender, address, telephone, e-mail address, Social Security Number for more than 240 million with no requirements or controls on how this database might be used. Many may not have the documents required to obtain a REAL ID, or they may face added requirements base on arbitrary and capricious decisions made by DMV employees.

Wikipedia entry on REAL ID