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How do you cryptographically shred it in a immutable blockhain? And what are the other options? It explicitly says you have to “erase the personal data”, GDPR

by he0001 8y ago

How do you cryptographically shred it in a immutable blockhain? And what are the other options? It explicitly says you have to “erase the personal data”, GDPR Chapt 3 Art. 17

nickpeterson 8y ago
I think you would put the surrogate key in the block chain interactions, and then have a side place where you store the encrypted gdpr data. Then you can just overwrite the fields with null and keep the key.
- warkdarrior 8y ago
  If you can overwrite the data fields, then it is no longer immutable, is it?
  - nickpeterson 8y ago
    There us no such thing as immutable data. The only constant is change. I'm suggesting that in the modeling of the data structures in a system, you rely only on the surrogate value and not the actual values. You're holding an immutable key to mutable data, that can be altered, but isn't necessary to be constant for the system to work. There is really no alternative, because laws are making it increasingly likely that immutable data stores will not be legally sound. Data stores like datomic have the notion of excision to handle this. Blockchains may require immutability, but that simply means you shouldn't put data in that must be removed by a court order.
- he0001 8y ago
  So this is still a gray area, the law explicitly says that you should erase all data. So there can’t be any information that could that could be traced to you. Even if you do encrypt the data to let’s say “xuiidha” this is an identifier and therefore under the law. If I look at the encrypted data before I delete the surrogate key and can see that this data is related to a person x. That’s an identifier. Even if I do delete that afterwards I can still connect that information because I’ve seen the data before. And even if you delete something there might be enough information left to still figure out who that person was and then under the law. The right to be erased does mean that there shouldn’t be any traces of you ever been there in the first place and the law is pretty clear about it. It’s not the weaker term “deleted”. But I guess there has to a ruling in some court before we know how they interprete this law.

by he0001 8y ago

How do you cryptographically shred it in a immutable blockhain? And what are the other options? It explicitly says you have to “erase the personal data”, GDPR Chapt 3 Art. 17

nickpeterson 8y ago

I think you would put the surrogate key in the block chain interactions, and then have a side place where you store the encrypted gdpr data. Then you can just overwrite the fields with null and keep the key.

warkdarrior 8y ago
If you can overwrite the data fields, then it is no longer immutable, is it?
- nickpeterson 8y ago
  There us no such thing as immutable data. The only constant is change. I'm suggesting that in the modeling of the data structures in a system, you rely only on the surrogate value and not the actual values. You're holding an immutable key to mutable data, that can be altered, but isn't necessary to be constant for the system to work. There is really no alternative, because laws are making it increasingly likely that immutable data stores will not be legally sound. Data stores like datomic have the notion of excision to handle this. Blockchains may require immutability, but that simply means you shouldn't put data in that must be removed by a court order.
he0001 8y ago
So this is still a gray area, the law explicitly says that you should erase all data. So there can’t be any information that could that could be traced to you. Even if you do encrypt the data to let’s say “xuiidha” this is an identifier and therefore under the law. If I look at the encrypted data before I delete the surrogate key and can see that this data is related to a person x. That’s an identifier. Even if I do delete that afterwards I can still connect that information because I’ve seen the data before. And even if you delete something there might be enough information left to still figure out who that person was and then under the law. The right to be erased does mean that there shouldn’t be any traces of you ever been there in the first place and the law is pretty clear about it. It’s not the weaker term “deleted”. But I guess there has to a ruling in some court before we know how they interprete this law.