Privacy Matters
Three professors from different disciplines provide their viewpoints on big data, data security, and the societal implications of this growing issue.
Illustrations: Matt Chinworth
Client: Colgate University
AD: Karen Luciani
Preliminary Sketches and Concepts
A Differential Privacy model obscures individual records with random noise while still allowing a data scientist to learn about the population as a whole.
Arguments about privacy often suggest an ideal of autonomy — no one should penetrate or influence our inner thoughts and lives. But, “the very possibility of being a person in the fullest sense already presumes that we’re not isolated individuals,” says Emilio Spadola. To be a person is to be networked through your community.
He also points out pitfalls of social media and big data such as monetization of personal interactions, producing value only for certain individuals and classes, as well as extremist destructive interactions that are not enriching the commons.
