Section 10.10. Where the Field Is Headed


10.10. Where the Field Is Headed

The privacy aspects of security are expanding rapidly, as this chapter has indicated. A question we as computer scientists need to ask ourselves is "just because we can do something, should we?" We can combine massive amounts of data, but is the gain from that worth the risk?

Despite the best efforts of researchers such as Sweeney [SWE04], people make inadequate attempts to protect privacy and then express surprise when personal privacy is violated. The topic of anonymizing data securely, to meet the combined needs of researching demographics and protecting privacy, is certain to continue to expand. There are several promising results in the area of anonymizing data in databases for privacy-preserving data mining. Clifton and colleagues [CLI03, KAN04, VAI04] and Malin and Sweeney [MAL02] are leading some important efforts.

A major multinational organization needs to strongly encourage countriesespecially the United Statesto develop a comprehensive, worldwide framework for citizens' data privacy. The computer security community can and should continue to demonstrate the importance of that problem, but ultimately the answers here will have to be political. The various privacy rights organizations, such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Privacy.Org, and Privacy International, and professional computing societies, such as IEEE and ACM, must continue their efforts.

Internet privacy will not occur by popular demand. Advertisers, content providers, spammers, and fraudsters derive too many advantages from collection of online data. Because some of the same techniques are used by information trackers and malicious attackers, good protection against malicious code will also have a positive impact on personal Internet privacy. So, too, will increased user knowledge.




Security in Computing
Security in Computing, 4th Edition
ISBN: 0132390779
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 171

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