MarBlog

uDig is an interesting open source GIS application built over Eclipse. As such it is java based and runs effortlessly on multiple platforms.

The front end developement is highly configurable if you want to get under the hood, but user friendly in it original installation state.

I am not an expert GIS user, but to meddle of course – and this tool strikes me as a free, yet very capable solution

This transcript of a talk at www2010 introduces some good summary rules about privacy in data. The talk focusses on “Big Data”, which relates mostly to socil, market and customer data in this context. However, every organisation or public authority looking at releasing data, sharing data or simply just managing it will benefit from observing some interesting points. I have picked a quote for each point to illustrate the consideration:

Security through obscurity is a reasonable strategy 

You may think that they shouldn’t rely on being obscure, but asking everyone to be paranoid about everyone else in the world is a very very very unhealthy thing. 

Not all publically accessible data is meant to be publicised

Some may hope that their content is widely distributed, but many more figure that it will only be consumed by the appropriate people

People who share PII aren’t rejecting privacy

Too many people working with Big Data assume that people who give out PII want their data to be aggregated and shared widely.

Aggregating and distributing data out of context is a privacy violoation

Context still matters.  It shapes the data that’s produced and what people’s expectations are.

Privacy is not access control

We have a long history of thinking of content as public or private, of representing privacy through numerical sequences like 700.  But this collapses two things: privacy and accessibility.

..And publicity twists it all

 Just because we can aggregate and redistribute data, should we?  

Now, these topics, presented by Danah Boyd, obviously focusses on Social networks and data with lots of user information. But most of the topics scale quite well to marine and scientific data in general. THe context changed slightly, and often the question of privacy is less demanding – although it still needs to be considered. Often the privacy related matters can almost be equated to ensuring quality of the data, and respecting the scientists who have collected the data.

There is currently big drives in legislation to push data into the public. I for one welcome this, but the question of suitability and publishing the data does raise questions. To which level of granularity do we actually publish the data and at what level is it enough that they are available on request. I would like to think that most data can be published, provided documentation and quality can be determined, but there is of course the question of obscurity. How obscure are the data, and is the effort required to make it publically searchable, downloadable, viewable, etc. justifiable if it is only a limited group of experts that are going to be looking at it anyway?