Save the date: Tuesday, March 12 — New VINT Research Note on Privacy, Technology and the Law [Dutch edition]

Interestingly, a visionary historical quote on the American Privacy Rights Clearinghouse website makes it totally clear that Big Data recombination is at the heart of privacy concerns today! A Huge Threat In the Making Back in 1977, ominously two hundred years after the first official copy of the Declaration of Independence was printed, the U.S. Privacy Protection Study Commission already exposed . . . ‘the erosion of individual liberties through the automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable.’ Hear, hear – the crucial difference being that in our Big Data age the number of record-keeping systems has exploded and they are huge instead of ‘small’, as goes for the continuous monitoring and real-time analysis of XXL data streams containing Personally Identifiable Information! The Real Danger Some quarter of a century ago, the U.S. Study Commission foresaw such data recombination to be ‘the real danger’ in the context of Privacy Protection. Its advance they dubbed ‘gradual’ and here we are: 26 years later Microsoft Research eventually has managed to operationalize their Differential Privacy for Everyone solution. The new Differential Privacy technology enables us to extract useful answers from several databases containing personal information and, at the same time, to offer strong individual privacy protections. This seemingly contradictory outcome is achieved by introducing relatively small inaccuracies in the answers provided by the system. These are large enough to protect privacy, and small enough that the answers provided are still useful. Although very important, Differential Privacy is only one Privacy-Enhancing Technology in the context of Privacy by Design, meaning the engineering of Fair Information Practices into the fabric of our Digital Economy. New Research Note on Privacy, Technology and the Law   In the mean time, there are lots of other issues organizations must consider. For instance the topics in this PRC Checklist of Responsible Information-Handling Practices. Indeed, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse website is one of the online treasure coves for insiders. However in the age of Big Data, privacy and data protection and its centricity to business opportunities should be opened up to the largest possible audience. That is why VINT will launch its next Big Data Research Note on Privacy, Technology and the Law for the Dutch market. The international edition will follow in April. As stated in the Obama Government’s Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights of 2012, consumer data privacy is the lubricant and fuel for the global digital economy. So let’s keep the engine running!