Privacy’s random answer
Big Blue is experimenting with an idea for customer databases called data randomization. The technique will, conceivably, preserve consumer privacy by masking data such as income, age, past purchases or medical information through mathematical calculations that can’t be unwound.
For instance, if a customer submits their age as 38 when registering at an online shopping site, a randomizing plug-in in their browser software will add a number between minus 25 and 112 to their age and send that number over to the server.
Randomization represents an opportunity to defuse the ugly conflict over privacy The wrinkle is that, at the back end, computers then apply a barrage of calculations onto the scrambled data to discern patterns among all customers. The 38-year-old individual’s true age can never be recovered, but an online business can somewhat accurately figure out how popular it is with 38 year olds. Unscrambled data collected by the company–such as how much a person paid for a car and on what date–could subsequently be randomized too, for additional privacy.
“The basic notion, in some sense, is kind of heresy in computer science. The normal notion is, in order to do a good job, you need to have accurate information,” said Rakesh Agrawal, a senior fellow at IBM who is leading the research. “And here we are saying, ‘You have good information, and we are going to perturb it or put errors into it to protect people’s privacy.’”
I love this. Seriously. It’s a very good thing.
