Apple's Health Experiment Is Riddled With Privacy Problems
http://gizmodo.com/apple-s-health-experiment-is-riddled-with-privacy-probl-1783878924
But from the start, ResearchKit raised a host of ethical
questions, particularly about protecting consumer privacy, and
getting informed consent from all study participants. Apple
insists it never sees the data you provide through
ResearchKit. But who the research institutions, hospitals, and
doctors share that data with is up to them (within the
constraints of laws like HIPAA.) And collected data is
typically "anonymized" by companies like Sage Bionetwork,
removing any possible identifiable information before sending
the data to the institution conducting the study. That may
not be sufficient to protect users' privacy in this age of
powerful big data informatics. There's something called the
"mosaic effect," whereby it is possible to reconstruct
someone's identity from a relatively small amount of data,
even after that data has technically been made anonymous. "We
can't promise perfect anonymity," John Wilbanks, chief commons
officer for Sage Bionetwork, told The Verge last year. "We're
going to de-identify it, but because we're going to make it
available for lots of research, there exists the change [sic] that
someone could re-identify you."
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently
doing so -- my opinions expressed here are mine alone.
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