Tag: Anonymization
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Goodbye, Stanford. Hello, Princeton!
[Editor’s note: The Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) is delighted to welcome Arvind Narayanan as an Assistant Professor in Computer Science, and an affiliated faculty member in CITP. Narayanan is a leading researcher in digital privacy, data anonymization, and technology policy. His work has been widely published, and includes a paper with CITP co-authors…
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The Traceability of an Anonymous Online Comment
Yesterday, I described a simple scenario where a plaintiff, who is having difficulty identifying an alleged online defamer, could benefit from subpoenaing data held by a third party web service provider. Some third parties—like Facebook in yesterday’s example—know exactly who I am and know whenever I visit or post on other sites. But even when…
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What Third Parties Know About John Doe
As David mentioned in his previous post, plaintiffs’ lawyers in online defamation suits will typically issue a sequence of two “John Doe” subpoenas to try to unmask the identity of anonymous online speakers. The first subpoena goes to the website or content provider where the allegedly defamatory remarks were posted, and the second subpoena is…
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Identifying John Doe: It might be easier than you think
Imagine that you want to sue someone for what they wrote, anonymously, in a web-based online forum. To succeed, you’ll first have to figure out who they really are. How hard is that task? It’s a question that Harlan Yu, Ed Felten, and I have been kicking around for several months. We’ve come to some…
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Anonymization FAIL! Privacy Law FAIL!
I have uploaded my latest draft article entitled, Broken Promises of Privacy: Responding to the Surprising Failure of Anonymization to SSRN (look carefully for the download button, just above the title; it’s a little buried). According to my abstract: Computer scientists have recently undermined our faith in the privacy-protecting power of anonymization, the name for…