Debates on Privacy-Preserving Statistics and Data Mining

A couple of initiative to discuss the management and mining of personal electronic information: The MIT SENSEable City Lab starts the Engaging Data Initiative with the First International Forum on the Application and Management of Personal Electronic Information (see CFP). The goal of this forum is to explore the novel applications for electronic data and address the risks, concerns, and consumer opinions associated with the use of this data. At the other side of the Pond, an afternoon will be dedicated to the obligations of French companies in handling their personal electronic information: Anonymisation des données : Cachez ces informations que nous ne devrions voir !.

The paper Mobiscopes for Human Spaces set the debate on these privacy-preserving data mining issues. They present a “mobiscope” has a federation of distributed mobile sensors into a taskable sensing system that achieves high-density sampling coverage over a wide area through mobility. Vehicular and handheld mobiscopes complement static sensing systems by addressing the fundamental limitations created by fixed sensors. Classic technical issues relate to data resolution and heterogeneity. The authors propose to handle privacy issues with policy definition, local processing (such as for my travel survey study), verification and privacy preserving data mining. Besides these technical solutions they acknlowledge the necessity to have a richer discussion of these observing technologies’ social implications

• explicitly considering broader policy precedents in information privacy as they apply to mobiscopes,
• extending popular education on information technology’s new observation capabilities,
• facilitating individuals’ participation in sensing their own lives, and
• helping users understand and audit their own data uploads.

However, the debate avoids the motivations behind research works behind mobiscopes. For instance, in what scenarios do we need high spatial density to accurately sample the field of spatially varying phenomena? When do the desirability of instantaneity and speed contributing to the health of society? Who are the “users” (a term often abused in the literature on personal electronic information) and are these “users” aware of their role of “user? For instance, reading You’re Leaving a Digital Trail. What About Privacy? makes me wonder if the debate on privacy can evolve if researchers do not make a serious effort in describing value-added scenarios without a techno-deterministic rhetoric.

Reference:
Abdelzaher, T., Anokwa, Y., Boda, P., Burke, J., Estrin, D., Guibas, L., Kansal, A., Madden, S., and Reich, J. (2007). Mobiscopes for human spaces. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 6(2):20–29

Eric Sadin, Surveillance globale (généralisation du principe de quantification invidualisée des personnes qui se met en place depuis l’universialtion de l’interconnexion)

Relation to my thesis: Elements to form an argumentation on privacy issues related to my research domain