Information Technology Research (ITR): Sensitive Information in a Wired World

在商业、政府、娱乐以及日常生活的几乎所有方面，计算机和网络的使用日益增加，导致敏感数据(即如果使用不当可能损害数据主体或其他相关方的数据)激增，对这些数据的所有权、控制权、隐私和准确性的担忧已成为当务之急。尽管在相关研究领域(如密码学和安全、数据库系统和数据挖掘)取得了重大的技术成就，但目前还没有全面的、端到端的技术基础设施来处理整个生命周期的敏感数据，甚至没有就我们这个数据密集型、网络化世界中主要利益相关者的权利和责任达成广泛的社会共识。有两个主要的学术活动中心(耶鲁和斯坦福)，三个较小规模的学术参与者(史蒂文斯理工学院、纽约大学和新墨西哥大学)，以及大量非学术合作伙伴的参与，包括技术公司(IBM、惠普和微软)、用户社区的代表(花旗集团、NIH、耶鲁医学信息学中心、人口普查局和特勤局)以及基于DC的政策组织(民主与技术中心和电子隐私信息中心)。该项目的一个主要技术主题是隐私保护数据挖掘，更广泛地说，满足尊重个人权利和允许执法部门和其他合法组织收集和挖掘海量数据集的潜在冲突目标的技术。其他技术议程项目包括：(1)分布式数据的可获取性和可靠性；(2)对加密数据库的操作；(3)数据的远程控制；(4)抵御恶意数据；(5)数据管理系统的可审计性。由于这些技术目标受到对基本术语(最明显的是“隐私”)含义缺乏共识的影响，该项目的一个主要目标是为研究权利、责任和侧重于敏感数据处理的公共政策制定一个概念性框架。该项目的这一部分纳入了“背景完整性”的概念，在评估敏感性时既考虑了背景又考虑了数据集的内容。该项目预计的结果包括下一代处理敏感信息的技术在质量上比当前一代的技术更好，以及一个有效的概念框架，用于制定政策和从哲学上探讨数据主体、数据所有者和数据用户的权利和责任。

Increasing use of computers and networks in business, government,recreation, and almost all aspects of daily life has led to aproliferation of sensitive data (i.e., data that, if used improperly,can harm data subjects or other relevant parties), and concern aboutthe ownership, control, privacy, and accuracy of these data has becomea top priority. Despite significant technical accomplishments in relevant research fields (e.g., cryptology and security, databasesystems, and data mining), there is no comprehensive, end-to-endtechnological infrastructure for handling sensitive data over the entire course of their lifetime, nor is there even widespread socialagreement about the rights and responsibilities of major stakeholdersin our data-intensive, networked world.This project is a multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary, multi-modalproject that looks comprehensively at sensitive data in a networkedworld. There are two main academic centers of activity (Yale andStanford), three smaller-scale academic participants (StevensInstitute of Technology, NYU, and the University of New Mexico), andsubstantial participation by non-academic partners, includingtechnology companies, (IBM, HP, and Microsoft), representatives ofuser communities (Citigroup, NIH, Yale Center for Medical Informatics,the Census Bureau, and the Secret Service), and DC-based policyorganizations (The Center for Democracy and Technology and TheElectronic Privacy Information Center).A major technical theme of the project is privacy-preserving datamining, and, more generally, techniques for meeting the potentiallyconflicting goals of respecting individual rights and allowing lawenforcement and other legitimate organizations to collect and minemassive data sets. Other technical agenda items include (1)accessibility and reliability of distributed data (2) operating onencrypted databases, (3) remote control of data, (4) repelling hostiledata, and (5) auditability of data-management systems. Because thesetechnical goals are affected by lack of agreement about the meaningsof basic terms, most notably "privacy," a major goal of the project isthe development of a conceptual framework for the study of rights,responsibilities, and public policies focused on sensitive-datahandling. This part of the project incorporates the notion of"contextual integrity," which considers both the context and thecontent of data sets in assessing sensitivity.Projected outcomes of the project include a next generation oftechnology for handling sensitive information that is qualitativelybetter than the current generation's and an effective conceptualframework for policy making and philosophical inquiry into the rightsand responsibilities of data subjects, data owners, and data users.