By: Peter Suber

Peter Suber — Sat, 21 May 2011 15:27:04 +0000

David: If I’m reading you correctly, you’re making a two-sided point. First, anonymous inquiry is valuable, and protecting it was the old default. Second, despite the value of anonymous inquiry, there are reasons to establish a new default. I feel the tension between these two propositions, but I agree with them both. One reason I agree (not already in your piece) was articulated by Pete Warden in a recent blog post at O’Reilly Radar . Warden generalizes on recent examples of failed attempts to anonymize data. “Precisely because there are now so many different public datasets to cross-reference, any set of records with a non-trivial amount of information on someone’s actions has a good chance of matching identifiable public records.” I accept this conclusion in part because I support open data, work for it, and am convinced that we’ll see more and more of it over time. Hence, I accept that the opportunities for cross-referencing will only increase, and consequently that the difficulties of anonymization will also only increase. If anonymization had a secure future, I’d want to preserve it as an option (and would often choose it myself). But I see it slipping away as a side-effect of of our other successes with open data.

You could say that there’s an optimistic argument for the new default, that for many users the value of networking surpasses the value of anonymity, and a pessimistic argument, that anonymization is becoming practically impossible. I see threads of both in your post, but I wanted to spell out the pessimistic argument further and show that it leads to the same conclusion.

By: me

me — Fri, 20 May 2011 18:36:34 +0000

You clearly misunderstand the freedom granted you by greatleader:

you are free to agree with greatleader

Comments on: Rebooting library privacy

By: Peter Suber

By: me