[foaf-dev] Re: privacy and open data

[Kjetil Kjernsmo]

Hi Phil,

On Wednesday 26 March 2008, Phil Archer wrote:
> Imagine a teenage girl who is being abused at home. She uses her
> social network to call for help. Luckily, she finds it and manages to
> escape the dangerous home life. Now she wants to keep in touch with
> her new support network but become invisible to her former abuser.

As Kingsley hinted, she would need another URI. However, there are 
problems with that too, imagine someone who knows the secret of her old 
and new identity states owl:sameAs about the two URIs. That is a scary 
social possibility, but the same as in other social contexts, some 
things must remain secret, and you need to only pass information to 
people who you trust not to make such statements.

Also, she must be careful about not making too many statements about her 
previous life. You could conceivably, even easily, launch a query with 
statements currently known to be true, as optionals, and see what 
subjects match. 

So, just a new identity is not enough, one must take care to share 
secrets only with people you trust, and also not make statements about 
your previous life.

Best,

Kjetil
-- 
Kjetil Kjernsmo
Programmer / Astrophysicist / Ski-orienteer / Orienteer / Mountaineer
kjetil at kjernsmo.net
Homepage: http://www.kjetil.kjernsmo.net/     OpenPGP KeyID: 6A6A0BBC