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This is good news. While their intentions may have been good, the information they were requesting could have haunted the students being tracked for the rest of
by ynniv 13y ago
This is good news. While their intentions may have been good, the information they were requesting could have haunted the students being tracked for the rest of their lives. As the government has asserted in their defense of
PRISM and related services, once this information has been shared with a company it is often treated as semi-public, and as anyone on this site should realize, information which is not protected as by law (HIPPA, etc) can never be made private again. (Information which is protected by law still can't be retracted, but at least legitimate companies have to think twice about using it.)
[ http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2013/03/inblooms-student-and-teacher-data.html http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2013/03/inblooms-... ]
[ http://www.classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/inBloom-Data-Fields-excerpts.pdf http://www.classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/i... ]
- erichurkman 13y agoIt could have given new life to thousands of guidance counselors and administrators the world over threatening: "Don't do _x_, it will go on your permanent record!"
- dkarapetyan 13y agoAnonymize the information as soon as the students graduate. Done! That way it can still be used for gaining insight without being traceable to any given student.
- ivank 13y agoReidentification algorithms could still be used to identify students; see http://33bits.org/tag/de-anonymization/ http://33bits.org/tag/de-anonymization/
- dkarapetyan 13y agoThe same way RSA keys can be recovered from CPU noise/heat fluctuations. There is a right way to do anonymization and a wrong way. The same way there is a right way to do crypto and not leak information from side-channels.
- Someone 13y agoDecent crypto uses 128+ bits; it takes only 33 bits to identify any human on earth; less than 29 to identify a US citizen. It also is way harder to anonymize data _and_ allow for it to be queried in the aggregate.
- dkarapetyan 13y agoWhich 29 bits are those exactly?
- Someone 13y agohttp://33bits.org/about/ http://33bits.org/about/ 2^29 is about 500 million.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]