5 ms·

What does "de-identified" mean, precisely? Does it simply remove the legal name but retain the uniqueness? Ie, can they tell that one person traveled from Vict

What does "de-identified" mean, precisely? Does it simply remove the legal name but retain the uniqueness? Ie, can they tell that one person traveled from Victoria, to Vancouver, to the Wetsuweten territory; but not know who, specifically, that person is?

ipaddr 5y ago
That's unnecessary. The information they are collecting at travel points (trains/planes/ports) with these vaccine passports they already have that information.
fennecfoxen 5y ago
De-identification can mean a lot of things, but when dealing with location histories one at a time, few of them help very much. How many people take the same route that you do to work? How many do it at the same time you went and stopped at the same store on the way back at the same time you did? How many took the same vacations? How many live in the same building? The intersection of these sets very rapidly approaches one person. The question is the extent to which the aggregation obscures all this.
- 14 5y ago
  How about who had access to it? Did they watch their gf movements while she was out? Will we be seeing down the road that it was abused and a jealous lover tracked their partner? This whole thing has already been played out in history and we know this is a bad thing. I am shocked HN crowd is defending this behaviour this time. This is not something we should accept as a society.
bushbaba 5y ago
…or that a person (anonymous unique id) traveled to 123 somewhere road. And stayed there from 8pm through 10am. And the tax records also show a man by the name of Joe who put the same address as their primary residence. Viola! De-anonymization.
- KMnO4 5y ago
  Okay, but who has access to the full PII of tax records? If the government really wanted deanonymized data, they could just get it directly. Instead, they’re intentionally enforcing a degree of anonymity. Part of that could include preventing those with access to tax records access to this location data as well.
deleted 5y ago
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ipaddr 5y ago

That's unnecessary. The information they are collecting at travel points (trains/planes/ports) with these vaccine passports they already have that information.

fennecfoxen 5y ago

De-identification can mean a lot of things, but when dealing with location histories one at a time, few of them help very much. How many people take the same route that you do to work? How many do it at the same time you went and stopped at the same store on the way back at the same time you did? How many took the same vacations? How many live in the same building? The intersection of these sets very rapidly approaches one person. The question is the extent to which the aggregation obscures all this.

14 5y ago
How about who had access to it? Did they watch their gf movements while she was out? Will we be seeing down the road that it was abused and a jealous lover tracked their partner? This whole thing has already been played out in history and we know this is a bad thing. I am shocked HN crowd is defending this behaviour this time. This is not something we should accept as a society.

bushbaba 5y ago

…or that a person (anonymous unique id) traveled to 123 somewhere road. And stayed there from 8pm through 10am. And the tax records also show a man by the name of Joe who put the same address as their primary residence. Viola! De-anonymization.

KMnO4 5y ago
Okay, but who has access to the full PII of tax records? If the government really wanted deanonymized data, they could just get it directly. Instead, they’re intentionally enforcing a degree of anonymity. Part of that could include preventing those with access to tax records access to this location data as well.

deleted 5y ago

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