RE: issue-199

Meaning two events can be linked to one another but neither of them can be linked to the actual/specific user or device.

- Shane

From: Edward W. Felten [mailto:felten@cs.princeton.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2013 4:12 PM
To: Shane Wiley
Cc: Rigo Wenning; public-tracking@w3.org; Mike O'Neill; achapell; npdoty@w3.org; tlr@w3.org; jeff@democraticmedia.org
Subject: Re: issue-199

What does "event linkable" mean?

On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 9:07 AM, Shane Wiley <wileys@yahoo-inc.com<mailto:wileys@yahoo-inc.com>> wrote:
Rigo,

Why are you so attached to this particular perspective on the definition of "de-identification"?  Does "De-identified but still event linkable" makes this any better?  Enhanced Pseudonymization does do much for me.  I begin to agree with whomever said let's just call it "the yellow state" for now and move on.

- Shane

-----Original Message-----
From: Rigo Wenning [mailto:rigo@w3.org<mailto:rigo@w3.org>]
Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2013 2:03 PM
To: Shane Wiley
Cc: public-tracking@w3.org<mailto:public-tracking@w3.org>; Mike O'Neill; 'achapell'; npdoty@w3.org<mailto:npdoty@w3.org>; tlr@w3.org<mailto:tlr@w3.org>; jeff@democraticmedia.org<mailto:jeff@democraticmedia.org>
Subject: Re: issue-199
Shane,

I understood mostly what you want to do. Like in audience measurement, you don't need to know who has preferred the ad in the upper right corner. You need the counter. I understand that.

You still do not answer my question on the naming of that thing.

I suggested to name that thing "enhanced pseudonymization", not de- identification. In audience measurement we sanitized the discussion a lot by removing ambiguous naming. That's the goal here too. You entertain the misunderstanding by naming your technique "de- identification". You could name it also "re-serialization". Whatever, but not de-identification.

If you want wording on the technique itself from me, you risk that I do more harm than good... But if you insist, I will do it..

 --Rigo

On Wednesday 10 July 2013 10:38:15 Shane Wiley wrote:
> I believe you've grossly misinterpreted the industry proposal on this
> point.  Yellow data is not "off the hook" - it can only be used for
> analytical purposes.  And no one has felt that this analysis would
> allow for behavioral fingerprinting of specific users - so happy to
> take that off the table - please provide proposed language.  The goal
> is to truly make yellow data (de-identified but event linkable) only
> usable for "aggregate analysis".  To be clear, this could result in
> analytics that say for a specific web page users generally click on
> ads placed in position B over position A so begin to show all ads in
> position B.  So the results may be generally applied but not
> specifically applied to a single individual.
>
> I hope this clears up the situation.



--
Edward W. Felten
Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs
Director, Center for Information Technology Policy
Princeton University
609-258-5906           http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~felten