Privacy and Security
Questions about privacy are central to the digital economy. We study how much people value privacy, the privacy paradox, and developments in state and federal privacy legislation. Our work has contributed to policy discussions of data portability, data regulation, and advertising models.
Claim that Anonymization is Impossible Unsupported
The assertion in a recent petition by public interest groups that it is impossible to anonymize data does not stand up to scrutiny, states Technology Policy Institute President Thomas Lenard in comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission. The agency should not base any decisions on this faulty analysis, which could have broader implications beyond sharing of customer proprietary network information (CPNI).
Event – The Big Data Revolution: Privacy Considerations
The Information Technology revolution has produced a data revolution-now commonly referred to as “big data”-in which massive amounts of data can be collected, stored and analyzed at relatively low cost. While the benefits of big data are numerous, from tracking health risks to helping consumers find the lowest prices on goods and services, the emergence of big data has also raised privacy concerns on the part of advocates and government officials. To alleviate these concerns, some are calling for remedies to either restrict or make more transparent how data are collected and used. Speakers at the event will discuss the big data revolution, proposed remedies for privacy concerns and their potential effects, including the findings in the recent paper, “The Big Data Revolution: Privacy Considerations,” authored by TPI’s Thomas Lenard and Paul Rubin.
No Evidence of Privacy Harms from “Big Data”
There is no evidence that the use of “big data” for commercial and other non-surveillance purposes has caused privacy harms according to a new paper, “The Big Data Revolution: Privacy Considerations,” by Technology Policy Institute’s Thomas Lenard and Paul Rubin. Moreover, the familiar remedies embodied in the Fair Information Privacy Practices (FIPPs) are ill-suited to the world of big data and are potentially a serious barrier to much of the innovation we hope to see from the big data revolution.
The FTC Then and Now: Privacy
A critique of the Federal Trade Commission’s recent approach to online privacy issues by the Technology Policy Institute’s Thomas Lenard and Paul Rubin is included in the new book The Regulatory Revolution at the FTC: A Thirty-Year Perspective on Competition and Consumer Protection. The book, edited by James C. Cooper of George Mason University School of Law, is a collection of essays by leading scholars and officials on how economics-based policymaking at the Commission has laid the groundwork for sensible consumer protection and antitrust regulations. Lenard and Rubin analyze the FTC’s recent privacy reports through the prism of the “regulatory revolution” at the FTC thirty years ago and find the current approach wanting in terms of yielding net benefits for consumers.