Principal Investigator Daniel Weitzner
In an effort to understand the complex challenges posed by big data and develop new solutions for security concerns, bigdata@CSAIL is launching a Big Data and Privacy Working Group that will bring together leaders from academia, industry, and government to examine the unique challenges surrounding privacy and big data.
While the rise of big data provides interesting new insights on everything from traffic and transportation patterns to health predictions and financial risks, it can also pose major privacy concerns. For the average consumer, the increasing ability for companies and governments to gain an inside look at their personal lives through collecting, processing and analyzing social media, health and financial records could spell trouble if an incorrect assumption is made about, for example, an individual’s health or financial records.
The goal of the group is to encourage long-term thinking on the role of technology in protecting and managing privacy, in particular when large and diverse data sets are collected and combined. The group will work toward collectively articulating major privacy challenges and developing a roadmap for future research needs. There is a wide variety of technical approaches to privacy protection, but not a good handle on how they might actually work at scale or whether we need to develop new technical tools. The group aims to close that gap so that large-scale analysis of data can proceed in a manner that is respectful of privacy values.
The formation of the Big Data and Privacy working group was inspired by a workshop hosted by bigdata@CSAIL in June 2013 to address the social and technical issues surrounding big data.