3 ms·

In the interest of charitable-ness, can you define "noise" and explain how rudimentary denoising algorithms that have existed since the 1960s can't penetrate it

In the interest of charitable-ness, can you define "noise" and explain how rudimentary denoising algorithms that have existed since the 1960s can't penetrate it? Time and time again people think they've anonymized data and they're always proven incorrect. Just come to grips with the fact you're participating in the sale of my (or whoever's) private data. Hope you sleep well!

yowlingcat 3y ago
> Just come to grips with the fact you're participating in the sale of my (or whoever's) private data. Hope you sleep well! I think it's really sad that the open source community has historically cultivated a culture which doesn't recognize this kind of paranoia as a lack of mental wellness. I think it's because the zealotry comports well with the extreme amount of energy needed to bootstrap the ecosystem into existence. You can care about privacy while being unrealistic about why you don't truly have it and never will, because of how much of a risk it is to the powers that be. You can live in a world ruled by proxy wars between gigantic political superpowers and empires who control the upstream levers of the macroeconomy to ensure that the world will always go in a direction opposite to what you'd prefer it to be. It's been like this for thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of years. But moreover, you can and likely do live in a society, full of people who will always value convenience over the freedom you seem to cherish. But even you likely are willing to give up some freedom and privacy for some convenience, unless you employ private security personnel to guard your private compound. And my guess is that if you were inclined in that direction, you wouldn't really be posting on HN. Short of that, to live in a modern society is to some degree accept this compromise and to accept one's own hypocrisy -- and my heart goes out to you as much as to myself because the existential anguish of this never goes away. Nonetheless, it is generally historically accepted that as we grow older, we are to develop the ability to constructively manage around this and gain the wisdom to do so. Perhaps the reason you sarcastically asked GP that you "hope you sleep well" is because you are projecting and you know that you yourself do not. My advice to you and those of your ilk: stop obsessing over theoeretical purity and get on with enjoying your life in the scarce time you have left on this planet. You'll have far less regrets at the end. And you will finally sleep well.
- Forbo 3y ago
  I'd rather work on building alternatives that respect their users than pay corporations to abuse me, thanks.
  - yowlingcat 3y ago
    I see such attempts as well-intentioned, and while benign, ultimately ineffective. Unless you find a way to make the right way the convenient way, social convergence will be a wind always pushing against you rather than at your back.
southernplaces7 3y ago
>Just come to grips with the fact you're participating in the sale of my (or whoever's) private data. Hope you sleep well! What an uncharitable response in that it forecloses on the original commentator even explaining their argument better or clarifying. I mean what? Fuck a bit more honest debate and just jump to pre-assumed moral judgement?
willseth 3y ago
"Denoising" algorithms can't remove this kind of noise. It doesn't work like that. You're simply mistaken. Generally the state of the art for adding noise to data is differential privacy or microaggregation. In the case of differential privacy it's typically gaussian or laplacian noise, but it is not a trivial application. Noise applied through microaggregation is not a mathematical function because microaggregation targets k in k-anonymity, and the "noise" can only be measured after treatment, through various distortion measures. My company doesn't sell private data or facilitate the sale of private data. We improve privacy within organizations to reduce the risk of privacy leaks. Data brokers and ad targeters would have no interest in our software. But thanks for the condescending comment!
- Xelynega 3y ago
  Who do you think "data brokers and ad targets" purchase data from? I don't understand how you could help companies protect the private data they collect from users and think that you're not facilitating the collection and sale of it.
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    From sources that don't use differential privacy to mask the relevant features. Can you maybe share your mathematical opposition to differential privacy? It's provably effectively.
  - willseth 3y ago
    Almost literally every company with human customers collects user data because it’s necessary to run a business. Very few of those have a business model where the purpose is to profit from the sale of that data. Every one of our customers is treating first party data for first party use cases, which is far more common than buying or selling data. How many companies have prod user data and developers that need an up to date prod-like database? A ton. Many just copy prod and distribute to devs. The good ones try to keep scripts for populating the database with test data up to date, but that’s a nightmare. Anonymization is an elegant solution to this problem. There are countless other use cases where organizations need to use their customer data internally and (should) want to protect identities. Most companies don’t want to sell their user data because they consider it competitive, and most data brokers don’t want to anonymize because why would they if they’re already selling raw data? They aren’t interested in our software because we prevent singling out of identities.
c0pium 3y ago
> they're always proven incorrect This is pretty obvious survivorship bias. You think that they’re wrong because you only hear about the cases when they were. There are tons of examples of breaches where the anonymization held up, it’s just that it’s not interesting so nobody talks about it.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Umm, yes? If I have a lock on my door that successfully prevented 99 people from breaking in, but one skilled lockpicker subverted it, then my lock has failed.
  - c0pium 3y ago
    That’s the wrong analogy. If 99% of locks are resistant to picking but yours wasn’t, it’s ridiculous to then say that locks don’t work.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      The analogy isn't that one out of a hundred locks don't work, but the none of the locks work in the face of a skilled attacker that may comprise 1% of the attackers. This isn't saying that locks are worthless, but it is saying that thinking of them as secure is a false confidence. This sort of truth is why there's a saying in the security field that you're at the greatest risk the moment that you think you're secure. In terms of data security, the only way to be actually secure from data leakage is to not be in possession of the data.
      - c0pium 3y ago
        That’s simply incorrect. Edit: my source for this is that I have been involved with hundreds of data breaches where the EU was satisfied that the privacy controls were sufficient to say that no personal data was compromised.
        JohnFen 3y ago

yowlingcat 3y ago

> Just come to grips with the fact you're participating in the sale of my (or whoever's) private data. Hope you sleep well! I think it's really sad that the open source community has historically cultivated a culture which doesn't recognize this kind of paranoia as a lack of mental wellness. I think it's because the zealotry comports well with the extreme amount of energy needed to bootstrap the ecosystem into existence. You can care about privacy while being unrealistic about why you don't truly have it and never will, because of how much of a risk it is to the powers that be. You can live in a world ruled by proxy wars between gigantic political superpowers and empires who control the upstream levers of the macroeconomy to ensure that the world will always go in a direction opposite to what you'd prefer it to be. It's been like this for thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of years. But moreover, you can and likely do live in a society, full of people who will always value convenience over the freedom you seem to cherish. But even you likely are willing to give up some freedom and privacy for some convenience, unless you employ private security personnel to guard your private compound. And my guess is that if you were inclined in that direction, you wouldn't really be posting on HN. Short of that, to live in a modern society is to some degree accept this compromise and to accept one's own hypocrisy -- and my heart goes out to you as much as to myself because the existential anguish of this never goes away. Nonetheless, it is generally historically accepted that as we grow older, we are to develop the ability to constructively manage around this and gain the wisdom to do so. Perhaps the reason you sarcastically asked GP that you "hope you sleep well" is because you are projecting and you know that you yourself do not. My advice to you and those of your ilk: stop obsessing over theoeretical purity and get on with enjoying your life in the scarce time you have left on this planet. You'll have far less regrets at the end. And you will finally sleep well.

Forbo 3y ago
I'd rather work on building alternatives that respect their users than pay corporations to abuse me, thanks.
- yowlingcat 3y ago
  I see such attempts as well-intentioned, and while benign, ultimately ineffective. Unless you find a way to make the right way the convenient way, social convergence will be a wind always pushing against you rather than at your back.

southernplaces7 3y ago

>Just come to grips with the fact you're participating in the sale of my (or whoever's) private data. Hope you sleep well! What an uncharitable response in that it forecloses on the original commentator even explaining their argument better or clarifying. I mean what? Fuck a bit more honest debate and just jump to pre-assumed moral judgement?

willseth 3y ago

"Denoising" algorithms can't remove this kind of noise. It doesn't work like that. You're simply mistaken. Generally the state of the art for adding noise to data is differential privacy or microaggregation. In the case of differential privacy it's typically gaussian or laplacian noise, but it is not a trivial application. Noise applied through microaggregation is not a mathematical function because microaggregation targets k in k-anonymity, and the "noise" can only be measured after treatment, through various distortion measures. My company doesn't sell private data or facilitate the sale of private data. We improve privacy within organizations to reduce the risk of privacy leaks. Data brokers and ad targeters would have no interest in our software. But thanks for the condescending comment!

Xelynega 3y ago
Who do you think "data brokers and ad targets" purchase data from? I don't understand how you could help companies protect the private data they collect from users and think that you're not facilitating the collection and sale of it.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  From sources that don't use differential privacy to mask the relevant features. Can you maybe share your mathematical opposition to differential privacy? It's provably effectively.
- willseth 3y ago
  Almost literally every company with human customers collects user data because it’s necessary to run a business. Very few of those have a business model where the purpose is to profit from the sale of that data. Every one of our customers is treating first party data for first party use cases, which is far more common than buying or selling data. How many companies have prod user data and developers that need an up to date prod-like database? A ton. Many just copy prod and distribute to devs. The good ones try to keep scripts for populating the database with test data up to date, but that’s a nightmare. Anonymization is an elegant solution to this problem. There are countless other use cases where organizations need to use their customer data internally and (should) want to protect identities. Most companies don’t want to sell their user data because they consider it competitive, and most data brokers don’t want to anonymize because why would they if they’re already selling raw data? They aren’t interested in our software because we prevent singling out of identities.

c0pium 3y ago

> they're always proven incorrect This is pretty obvious survivorship bias. You think that they’re wrong because you only hear about the cases when they were. There are tons of examples of breaches where the anonymization held up, it’s just that it’s not interesting so nobody talks about it.

JohnFen 3y ago
Umm, yes? If I have a lock on my door that successfully prevented 99 people from breaking in, but one skilled lockpicker subverted it, then my lock has failed.
- c0pium 3y ago
  That’s the wrong analogy. If 99% of locks are resistant to picking but yours wasn’t, it’s ridiculous to then say that locks don’t work.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    The analogy isn't that one out of a hundred locks don't work, but the none of the locks work in the face of a skilled attacker that may comprise 1% of the attackers. This isn't saying that locks are worthless, but it is saying that thinking of them as secure is a false confidence. This sort of truth is why there's a saying in the security field that you're at the greatest risk the moment that you think you're secure. In terms of data security, the only way to be actually secure from data leakage is to not be in possession of the data.
    - c0pium 3y ago
      That’s simply incorrect. Edit: my source for this is that I have been involved with hundreds of data breaches where the EU was satisfied that the privacy controls were sufficient to say that no personal data was compromised.
      - JohnFen 3y ago