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2 Safeguarding Privacy
Pages 12-19

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From page 12...
... A particular challenge is that even if disclosure of some data is not likely to cause harm, aggregation of those data with other data may be harmful. Researchers have explored potential technical solutions to some aspects of this problem, such as differential privacy, but these work at best in limited circumstances, and the gen eral challenge persists.
From page 13...
... But these data can be used for multiple purposes, some of which people want and others of which they do not want. As ex amples, data can be used to identify suspects in a crime, ap prove loans, sense early Alzheimer's disease, detect a person's Data that can learning style, infer sexual orientation or political affiliation, estimate income, identify a network of friends or acquain be used tances, recognize where a person is through public cameras, or detect when a person is home.
From page 14...
... It is simply an exchange agreement. digital world, most As originally developed in the 1970s, notice and con sent was a simple and easy-to-understand system designed people would be to respect individual autonomy and the desire to derive value from data.
From page 15...
... It is gathered through administrative records, transactions, and other activities of daily life, and what can be inferred by combining such data may be more harmful than any individual piece of data. Other Approaches to Privacy Protection As discussed earlier, better cybersecurity protections and stronger accountability can help to ease the dilemmas associated with privacy.
From page 16...
... Balancing Competing Demands for Privacy A pressing dilemma in the era of big data is that different stake holders have conflicting interests in the balance between privacy and data collection. Even in a simple abstract model with just one data holder and two data subjects who exchange only cash and data, there are many scenarios in which the resulting flows of cash and data will not necessarily benefit everyone.
From page 17...
... The more control consumers have over their data, the more risks they are likely to take with those data, in the same way that adding safety features to cars, such as anti lock braking systems, may lead drivers to drive faster because they feel secure. Moreover, transparency and control are necessary but not sufficient conditions for privacy protec tion.
From page 18...
... Furthermore, computers connected to the Internet typically send out voluminous quantities of data that can be hard to hide, and excep tional efforts to turn on privacy controls can make a user even more visible to those who are looking for such actions. Indeed, people have little control over the generation of "microdata" from everyday activities even though such data can be combined in revealing ways.
From page 19...
... Benefits may be hard to The pinpoint, but discussion among people representing multiple perspectives can often arrive at conclusions. At the least, the entities collecting the data could be required to explain to people how they or others are benefiting -- if, say, such data collection is helping to stop fraud.


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