Latanya Sweeney
Re-identification, and k-Anonymity
Proving anonymised data is not anonymous
Rating
88Impact score
Domains
Data privacyRe-identificationTechnology policy
Scouting report
Showed that 87 percent of Americans could be uniquely identified from ZIP code, birth date and sex, then demonstrated it by re-identifying the Massachusetts governor’s medical records in a public dataset and mailing them to him. Proposed k-anonymity in response. Later served as chief technologist at the FTC and published work on discrimination in online ad delivery.
Curator’s note
Mailed the governor his own supposedly anonymous health records.
Portrait
Painted from a photograph of Latanya Sweeney by 'arcticpenguin', licensed CC BY 2.0.
Sources
- 01Latanya Sweeney en.wikipedia.org
- 02k-Anonymity (2002) dataprivacylab.org