[foaf-dev] Re: privacy and open data

[Kingsley Idehen]

Kjetil Kjernsmo wrote:
> On Wednesday 26 March 2008, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>   
>> In real life, there are many equivalents of owl:sameAs as one
>> traverses the graph of life outside cyberspace. Being spotted and
>> deliberately or inadvertently bringing attention to a new URI is not
>> really resolvable.
>>     
>
> I absolutely agree. I think, however, that parallels to real life will 
> become embarrassingly clear to people, whereas up to now cyberspace has 
> been something rather detached from meatspace.
>
> For example, there was a case here in Norway where a man suspected of 
> child abuse over more than two decades was arrested. The press of 
> course withheld his name, but gave a lot of other details. A colleague 
> of mine figured he'd try to find his name based on this information, 
> and it only took 15 minutes. Most do not even consider the possibility 
> that such things can be found at all, much less in 15 minutes. 
>   
Yep!

Spot on!

I've been warning kids for years about interviews in 2-3 years time :-)
> With SPARQL endpoints, the time needed to find this is reduced to a few 
> seconds, and I think this is the core problem that we are facing. It is 
> not really that the information is impossible to piece together, nor is 
> that the problems don't exist in meatspace, it is that our technology 
> is so powerful that the windows that previously was slightly open are 
> now blown wide open. 
>
> This might embarrass quite a large number, offend some others and put 
> yet a few others at risk, and therefore I think that we now, early on, 
> has to find ways to use the power that lies in this technology to 
> mitigate these risks. If we don't, I think we'll see that people don't 
> really want the power given to them.
>   

Ironically many URIs is the only way to ultimately protect oneself, to 
some degree,  ironically :-)

> Kjetil
>   


-- 


Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	      Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
President & CEO 
OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com