Privacy - Page 61.5

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Discover Privacy News

Ushering in a New Era

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Consumers are becoming increasingly concerned with how their activities are being tracked. This focus on privacy and data security is ushering in a new era of security. Learn more in an interesting SecurityToday article:

Privacy advocates worry that consumer license plate readers are creating a nosier neighborhood watch

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I have a problem with this. These cameras don't just record license plates, but people, bicycles and animals. It indiscriminately records everything, not just traffic accidents. Cameras should not be a substitute for police doing their job. This data is being sold to and used by anyone who wants it - ICE, private citizens, and other government agencies. If you had a detective on the street corner or in front of your house 24/7 recording every vehicle passing by, the time it passed every day in perpetuity and people in the car, people would see that as an invasion of privacy. "I have nothing to hide" is something said by someone in a position of privilege - our landscapers, housekeepers, and others in our neighborhood in the wrong place at the wrong time are being targeted. Please comment below - we'd love to hear what you think.

You’re very easy to track down, even when your data has been anonymized

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A new study reveals that you can be easily re-identified from almost any database, even when your personal details have been stripped out. Keep reading to learn the details. The data trail we leave behind us grows all the time. Most of it isn’t that interesting—the takeout meal you ordered, that shower head you bought online—but some of it is deeply personal: your medical diagnoses, your sexual orientation, or your tax records. The most common way public agencies protect our identities is anonymization. This involves stripping out obviously identifiable things such as names, phone numbers, email addresses, and so on. Data sets are also altered to be less precise, columns in spreadsheets are removed, and “noise” is introduced to the data. Privacy policies reassure us that this means there’s no risk we could be tracked down in the database.