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It's entirely possible to collect information to identify a unique human without it being considered PII - combine it all together and maybe add a sprinkle here

It's entirely possible to collect information to identify a unique human without it being considered PII - combine it all together and maybe add a sprinkle here and there (perhaps public domain info, buying "anonymized" info) and boom, you know who it is. Yet, if you're audited, it's just a series of IDs and numbers, nothing identifying there...Right? If you ask Spotify for your data dump, you'll notice in a lot of the .JSON files the information is encrypted such that you can't understand it (it's just numbers). It's impossible to say whether it's actually stored like this or if they encrypt it before they provide the archive to you. Meta data is almost impossible to legislate against, and as far as I can see, is entirely legal to collect and use as you see fit. How many people in the world are on hackernews, named "lopis", use Firefox 65, have an IP address in $country, use this screen resolution etc etc Easy enough to identify who you are.

hyperman1 6y ago
AFAIK the GDPR already does this: See first definition of https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679&from=EN#d1e1489-1-1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... You are identifiable by combining multiple factors, even if every individual factor is not enough to be identifiable. If I understand it correctly, the EU 'personal data' (PD) concept is much wider than the US 'Personally Identifiable Information' (PII) concept. You are touching one of the differences here.
- cj 6y ago
  This is correct. For GDPR purposes, data is PII if it can be used in combination with any other data to identify an individual. Doesn’t matter if the individual data points are not themselves identifying. One thing I’ve been curious about is whether AI and algorithms that can potentially take a huge amount of anonymous data and “identify” a user (but not explicitly), only identify in the sense that the output of the AI was only possible by correlating individuals granularity enough. I’m almost certain the answer is yes. I’m not clear on whether GDPR addresses that issue or not.
  - neallindsay 6y ago
    > For GDPR purposes, data is PII if it can be used in combination with any other data to identify an individual. By that definition, all data is PII. There is no information available on this planet that has not been influenced by people. I'm not trying to be obtuse. I worry about this problem a lot. Obviously we need to keep companies from doing stupid stuff like storing the first digit of a Social Security number (can't identify someone by that!) and then the second digit (also not uniquely identifying!), etc. On the other hand, what if I have web log files that only store URL, timestamp, and status code? Is that OK? If I get hits for two specific pages within a couple of minutes of each other, and there's only one person on the planet who would know about both those pages, I know they were visiting my site at that time. People influence the world around them and it feels like privacy laws are trying to prevent companies from understanding that influence. At the same time every other incentive is pushing those companies to understand more.
    - remus 6y ago
      > By that definition, all data is PII. There is no information available on this planet that has not been influenced by people. I think that is a step too far. For example, it seems quite clear that a dataset of daily average temperatures from the top of Everest is not personally identifying information.
      - ohmaigad 6y ago
        Black hair = PII, address = PII, drives black BMW = PII, any of this information together with other information could be used to identify an individual and that is exactly the issue. It is like saying that one brick is a house just because multiple bricks can make a house. If you gather enough data you can potentially point to specific individual. Just like unique PC fingerprinting - gather enough data points so that the fingerprint is unique.
        hyperman1 6y ago
        AFAIK according to the GDPR, knowing each individual fact is fine. Only the combination is PD. Hence, installing a camera that counts black-haired people, another that counts people entering some location, a third counting people having a BMW is perfectly fine. Merging the 3 recorded tapes to identify a person is not. Giving the 3 tapes to someone else is only OK if you guarantee somehow they wont do the merge.

hyperman1 6y ago

AFAIK the GDPR already does this: See first definition of https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679&from=EN#d1e1489-1-1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... You are identifiable by combining multiple factors, even if every individual factor is not enough to be identifiable. If I understand it correctly, the EU 'personal data' (PD) concept is much wider than the US 'Personally Identifiable Information' (PII) concept. You are touching one of the differences here.

cj 6y ago
This is correct. For GDPR purposes, data is PII if it can be used in combination with any other data to identify an individual. Doesn’t matter if the individual data points are not themselves identifying. One thing I’ve been curious about is whether AI and algorithms that can potentially take a huge amount of anonymous data and “identify” a user (but not explicitly), only identify in the sense that the output of the AI was only possible by correlating individuals granularity enough. I’m almost certain the answer is yes. I’m not clear on whether GDPR addresses that issue or not.
- neallindsay 6y ago
  > For GDPR purposes, data is PII if it can be used in combination with any other data to identify an individual. By that definition, all data is PII. There is no information available on this planet that has not been influenced by people. I'm not trying to be obtuse. I worry about this problem a lot. Obviously we need to keep companies from doing stupid stuff like storing the first digit of a Social Security number (can't identify someone by that!) and then the second digit (also not uniquely identifying!), etc. On the other hand, what if I have web log files that only store URL, timestamp, and status code? Is that OK? If I get hits for two specific pages within a couple of minutes of each other, and there's only one person on the planet who would know about both those pages, I know they were visiting my site at that time. People influence the world around them and it feels like privacy laws are trying to prevent companies from understanding that influence. At the same time every other incentive is pushing those companies to understand more.
  - remus 6y ago
    > By that definition, all data is PII. There is no information available on this planet that has not been influenced by people. I think that is a step too far. For example, it seems quite clear that a dataset of daily average temperatures from the top of Everest is not personally identifying information.
    - ohmaigad 6y ago
      Black hair = PII, address = PII, drives black BMW = PII, any of this information together with other information could be used to identify an individual and that is exactly the issue. It is like saying that one brick is a house just because multiple bricks can make a house. If you gather enough data you can potentially point to specific individual. Just like unique PC fingerprinting - gather enough data points so that the fingerprint is unique.
      - hyperman1 6y ago
        AFAIK according to the GDPR, knowing each individual fact is fine. Only the combination is PD. Hence, installing a camera that counts black-haired people, another that counts people entering some location, a third counting people having a BMW is perfectly fine. Merging the 3 recorded tapes to identify a person is not. Giving the 3 tapes to someone else is only OK if you guarantee somehow they wont do the merge.