Group topic: Deidentification and Reidentification

Second oral report from all teams due today

One person on each team, a different person from last week, should give a five-minute oral progress report, with an update on the tasks you are going to do, which ones are done, and which major steps remain. Remember that your draft term paper is due next week. In your report, use an overhead transparency (only one) to show the following information.

1. List the major sections of the paper.
2. For each section, say who is going to write the section.
3. Also for each section, say whether:
   1. It is essentially already written.
   2. It isn't written, but you've done essentially all the research required for it.
   3. You have research left to do, and say what that research is.

The reidentification team should not give a separate report, but include this in your presentation.

Topic for today

• Latanya Sweeney's introduction to reidentification. Skip sections on Scrub, Datafly II, and mu-Argus

• National Archive of Criminal Justice Data. Read the data use restrictions. If you wish, continue past this page and look at the SAS data file specifying the record format.

• Browse: Social Security Death Index Interactive Search. Try a few searches to get a feel for the number and type of records in the Social Security Death Index

• SQL for web nerds, by Philip Greenspun. Read part 3. You can skip this if you are familiar with the very basics of SQL.

• The Southern Illinoisan v. The Department of Public Health

• Skim 42 USC Section 3789g(a): Title 42 - The Public Health and Welfare Chapter 46 - Justice System Improvement Subchapter VIII - Administrative Provisions Sec. 3789g. Confidentiality of information. The relevant part of this law states

  ... no officer or employee of the Federal Government, and no recipient of assistance under the provisions of this chapter shall use or reveal any research or statistical information furnished under this chapter by any person and identifiable to any specific private person for any purpose other than the purpose for which it was obtained in accordance with this chapter.

  This chapter also notes, "All criminal intelligence systems ... shall collect, maintain, and disseminate criminal intelligence information in conformance with policy standards which are prescribed by the Office of Justice Programs and which are written to ... assure that such systems are not utilized in violation of the privacy and constitutional rights of individuals."

• Germany's Law on Statistics for Federal Purposes, Article 21 and Article 22. A German reidentification Law.

You might also want to browse the project resource page for this topic.