Comments on: The Fallacy of Anonymous Institutions http://33bits.org/2008/12/15/the-fallacy-of-anonymous-institutions/ The End of Anonymized Data and What to Do About It Thu, 26 Apr 2012 19:07:05 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: IRB is incompatible with open access to data « Ben Mazzotta’s Weblog http://33bits.org/2008/12/15/the-fallacy-of-anonymous-institutions/#comment-182 Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:30:50 +0000 http://33bits.org/?p=97#comment-182 [...] a comment » Mathematician Arvind Narayanan at his blog 33 Bits writes a compelling post on the failure of efforts to protect the identities of individuals in public domain, scientific [...]

]]> By: dfb http://33bits.org/2008/12/15/the-fallacy-of-anonymous-institutions/#comment-166 Sun, 08 Mar 2009 08:51:38 +0000 http://33bits.org/?p=97#comment-166 This is very interesting. Even if you found several high schools that matched the description, it would still be much easier to de-anonymize than considering the several thousand schools in the midwest.

]]> By: Zachary Schrag http://33bits.org/2008/12/15/the-fallacy-of-anonymous-institutions/#comment-34 Tue, 16 Dec 2008 02:24:20 +0000 http://33bits.org/?p=97#comment-34 Some historical perspective, from a manuscript first written in 1954:

“It is a popular pastime of academic cognoscenti to disclose ‘anonymous’ towns and authors. . . . Without undertaking any special search, we have noticed the real names of ‘Middletown,’ ‘Southerntown,’ ‘Cotton,’ ‘Yankee City,’ ‘Cantonville,’ ‘Elmtown,’ and ‘San Carlos’ identified in print: it is standard form for book reviewers to reveal the name of an ‘anonymous’ community.”

Harold Orlans, “Ethical Problems and Values in Anthropological Research,” in U.S. Congress, House Committee on Government Operations, Research and Technical Programs Subcommittee, The Use of Social Research in Federal Domestic Programs: Part IV—Current Issues in the Administration of Federal Social Research (90th Cong., 1st. sess., 1967), 362.

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