High-tech firms to push data-privacy law
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Microsoft Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and other high-tech companies are preparing to push for data-privacy legislation next year to replace what they consider an outdated patchwork of state and federal laws that are inconsistent and burdensome.
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A proposed law would require companies to keep detailed data about peopleâs Internet and phone use that goes beyond a European Union directive.
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Cutting-edge data mining and other intelligence tools could redefine privacy as we know it. A News.com special report.
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Privacy advocates are concerned that an implantable microchip designed to help doctors tap into a patient's medical records could undermine confidentiality or could even be used to track the patient's movements.
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As more firms install software to keep tabs on workers, start-ups and heavy hitters alike spy an opportunity in surveillance products.
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(InfoWorld) - Jeff Jonas, the chief scientist and distinguished engineer at IBM Corp.'s entity analytic solutions group, has developed a means of sharing corporate data without revealing what that data contains. This technology, called anonymization, effectively "shreds" information, making it possible for companies to share information about their customers with governments or other companies without giving away any personal data. Over time, Jonas believes companies will increasingly use anonymization to defend their data, and corporate well-being, from competitors and identity thieves. Jonas recently sat down with IDG News Service in Singapore to discuss anonymization and how protecting customer privacy will make companies more competitive. IDG News Service: How does anonymization work? Jeff Jonas: Normally, somebody with data encrypts it, and then they transfer it. Then, the recipient decrypts the data to use it. But while it's in transit -- in flight -- it's encrypted. Cryptographers have invented math that allows you to shred something, and then unshred it: encrypt it, and then decrypt it. Part of cryptography is something else that creates digital signatures. Smart math people have invented algorithms that are called one-way hashes. It looks like encryption because you put in data and what comes out is not readable to humans. But there's no way to take what came out and take the math and run it backwards, and get the input value. That's why I use the example of a pig and a sausage. If I give you the sausage and the grinder, you can't go backwards and make a pig. I just took advantage of something that someone else has made, and I just used it in a slightly different way to get a new result. IDGNS: In effect, the process of anonymization creates digital signatures of information that can be compared against other signatures for possible matches. At the same time, the signatures cannot be used to recreate the original data. Jonas: Normally, I have data and you have data and we want to figure out what our data means together. But I don't want to give you mine and you don't want to give me yours. This is why information sharing will fail: everyone wants to be the recipient. Sometimes a government may pass a law that says I, as a company, have to give you my data. Maybe you have a watch list, and you don't want me to see it. That's how I ended up creating this. I was getting ready to take my kids on a cruise. I made the reservations and then saw in a newspaper that there was a threat against Port Canaveral, Florida, from terrorist scuba divers. I was thinking, "Oh no, I'm taking my kids on a cruise." The U.S. government has this really cool, big list of bad guys. They don't send it to the cruise line, and the cruise line has all these reservations, and they don't send it all to the government. You could take 10 bad guys, they could just sneak across the border, use their real names and get on the cruise ship. That was the tension point. All of the work I had done prior allows an organization to share data with itself. What happens if you want to share data across two organizations and only find things in common? How would you do that? IDGNS: In the past, you've noted that personal information will get more valuable over time. Where is the incentive for companies to make anonymization of data a common practice? Jonas: Well, this is my theory. The pressures to an organization, every time it makes a copy of its data and sends it someplace else, the risk of someone stealing it grows. It's now twice as hard to protect, because you've just made a copy. You think its hard to protect this copy, but now you have two copies. Then you make another copy and send it to a database-marketing company -- now there are three copies. That creates real stress for an enterprise that's trying to manage their data. IDGNS: The incentive for companies to use anonymization then becomes protection of its own resources, rather than defending the privacy of customers? Jonas: Right. Corporations spend more time trying to be competitive than protecting privacy. If they spent all their time protecting privacy, they couldn't become more competitive. They would become nonexistent. I spend 40 percent of my time now working on privacy and civil liberties. You're right on the crux of this point: how do you create things that companies want to deploy, that make them more competitive and are good for privacy at the same time? Consumers traded privacy left and right, for convenience. IDGNS: And there's no way to get it back at this point. Jonas: Yeah. The toothpaste is out of the tube. Companies don't just say they want to spend money on privacy. They don't and I don't see that as a trend. You have to create something that can make them more competitive. Corporations are very risk averse. The notion of losing all their customer data, either to a competitor or identity thieves, and then having to make a public announcement that they lost all of their banking data, or all of their medical data, it can destroy their entire brand. If you can show them how to be more competitive, and at the same time reduce their risk exposure, then you are taking them on a journey, like in the case of anonymization, that is more responsible than not. It's a very new thing to be able to analyze data after it's been shredded. I am trying to teach the technique and I've heard other companies have announced they're going to create products like that, which is really good. There's a growing number of people using anonymization, and I think the wave is coming.
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Several large technology corporations will urge the U.S. Supreme Court Monday to continue to shield businesses and innovators from legal responsibility if their products or services are used by consumers for illegal acts.
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A flurry of new data regulations are arriving in the next year, and yet again businesses are expected to comply with an increased number of complex, arcane and often conflicting requirements.  More than ever, companies need clear information about their data protection and data exposure.  Yet data protection products are further away than ever from providing this information.  Download this white paper now to learn how to protect your businesses data.
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Security vendors eye a billion-dollar pie as key section of accounting law goes into effect.
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A congressional inquiry into online data brokers has raised concerns that federal and local law enforcement may be skirting privacy laws to obtain calling records
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Companies brace for privacy debate as potentially intrusive applications arrive faster than expected.
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Data privacy is likely to be among the hottest technology issues to face Congress this year, in part due to interest from the new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.
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Two bills take different approaches toward the tricky concept of how to regulate what happens if a company has a data leak.
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Data privacy is likely to be among the hottest technology issues to face Congress this year, thanks in part to interest from the new chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee.
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As Congress calls telecom CEOs on the carpet, CNET News.com finds out how well the companies protect your privacy.
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Technological changes and   personal privacy have been at odds ever since modern notions of   privacy emerged more than a century ago.
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Telecommunications companies ask for more personal data than companies in other industries, according to a study, but they are  getting better at communicating with their customers.