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When, not if, they have a data breach, those records are trivially deanonymized by malicious third parties. They shouldn't have the data, they don't need it, an
by robbedpeter 5y ago
When, not if, they have a data breach, those records are trivially deanonymized by malicious third parties. They shouldn't have the data, they don't need it, and storing it long term is completely unnecessary.
Collection of private data is only ever appropriate directly from an individual with informed consent, with strict and mutually agreed upon limits on how long it can be stored and the uses to which it can be put. Permanent or long-term data retention should be rare and have intense oversight. Almost everything else should be ephemeral on the level of minutes to hours.
Legislation will catch up after this bites us in the ass, and the longer it takes, the worse it's going to be.
- arcticbull 5y ago> They shouldn't have the data, they don't need it, and storing it long term is completely unnecessary. I mean, I completely disagree. If the job of a public health agency isn't to use anonymous data to make informed decisions about public health what on earth is their job?
- robbedpeter 5y agoThey don't need location tracking. It's inherently not anonymous.
- arcticbull 5y agoThat’s a good opinion haha, but I do trust them to make the determination around what existing data set they need to be effective. That’s why we have them.
- sneak 5y agoThere is no way to anonymize movement data. Anyone telling you that location data is "de-identified" or "anonymized" is lying to you.
- arcticbull 5y agoMy point isn't that it's not possible to de-anonymize the data in general, but rather that this organization doesn't have datasets that they can correlate it with, they don't have any incentive to do so, they don't have any mandate to do so, and this data is also available to anyone willing to cut a check. My point is they are using data to make data-driven decisions and do their jobs. This is the kind of thing you want from a government. So again, I ask. If the job of a public health agency isn't to use anonymous data to make informed decisions about public health what on earth is their job?