Anonymity: a comparison between the legal and computer science perspectives

Mascetti S., Monreale A., Ricci A., Gerino A.

Privacy  Data Encryption  Anonymity 

Privacy preservation has emerged as a major challenge in ICT. One possible solution for enforcing privacy is to guarantee anonymity. Indeed, ac- cording to international regulations, no restriction is applied to the handling of anonymous data. Consequently, in the past years the notion of anonymity has been extensively studied by two different communities: Law researchers and professionals that propose definitions of privacy regulations, and Computer Scientists attempting to provide technical solutions for enforcing the legal re- quirements. In this contribution we address the problem with an interdisciplinary approach, in the aim to encourage the reciprocal understanding and collaboration between researchers in the two areas. To achieve this, we compare the different notions of anonymity provided in the European data protection Law with the formal models proposed in Computer Science. This analysis allows us to identify the main similarities and differences between the two points of view, hence high- lighting the need for a joint research effort.

Source: European Data Protection: Coming of Age, edited by Serge Gutwirth, Ronald Leenes, Paul De Hert, Yves Poullet, pp. 85–115, 2013

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