Government study makes a speciality of how privacy-enhancing technologies and massive-scale analytics will shape the way forward for big data.
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White House counselor John Podesta is leading a 90-day government study that explores the intersection of huge data and privacy. Consistent with Podesta, now could be the time to take a better take a look at big data analytics and other comprehensive data-mining techniques which could shape future policies.
“The study is fundamentally a scoping exercise. We wish to examine the administration’s consumer privacy blueprint and take a harder seriously look into existing policies,” said Podesta during a March 3 workshop on big data, organized by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, inclusive of privacy and tech experts, joined Podesta on stage to speak about the significance of privacy enhancing technologies and enormous-scale analytics.
Experts cited using cryptography in databases and Web applications, and computing on encrypted data. Cynthia Dwork, distinguished scientist at Microsoft Research, presented another way to safeguarding data called differential privacy, a method used for statistical analysis of huge datasets. “What is the privacy dream? That we’ve got a database with useful but private information and we’ve got a curator that wishes to take this knowledge and sanitize it, so data analysts can only interact with the sanitized data set,” Dwork said.
[New government website offers a glance at which companies are pursuing cloud security seal of approval. Read FedRAMP Cloud Security Approval: Look Who Applied.]
The workshop is the 1st in a sequence of events to be hosted by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as portion of a comprehensive review of massive data and privacy, which the president launched in January. The events deal with the gathering, analysis, and use of massive data for privacy, the economy, and public policy. Insights collected in the course of the events will feed into the study being conducted by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). Those results might be used to shape a course of action, which includes identifying future technological trends and deciding whether further government action is needed.
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The goal of the great review is to begin a countrywide conversation, said Pritzker, and to reply to key questions akin to: What are the foundations of trust that companies and governments must adopt? How can new technologies protect consumer data? What may be done to tackle a number of the more unanticipated consequences of huge data analytics?
“The price which might be generated from big data will never be hypothetical. It’s about creating new business models, innovation, and enhancements in efficiency — from education to healthcare,” said Podesta. He named the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program, which catalogs genomic variations related to cancer, for example. TCGA generates large volumes of detailed genomic data derived from human tumor specimens and combines it with newly collected or existing clinical information gathered from different patient populations.
PCAST will continue to collect insights from businesses, academia, and the general public to advertise the “free flow of data” in a fashion that does not threaten privacy and security, Podesta said.
Find out how a central authority program is putting cloud computing at the fast track to higher security. Also within the Cloud Security issue of InformationWeek Government: Defense CIO Teri Takai on why FedRAMP helps everyone.
Elena Malykhina began her career on the Wall Street Journal, and her writing has appeared in various news media outlets, including Scientific American, Newsday, and the Associated Press. For several years, she was the net editor at Brandweek and later Adweek, where she … View Full Bio
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