

Your Morning Commute is Unique - randomwalker
http://33bits.org/2009/05/13/your-morning-commute-is-unique-on-the-anonymity-of-homework-location-pairs/

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nkurz
I've read the post, and I've skimmed the paper on which it is based. It's an
interesting premise: if you know which census tract a person lives in, you can
identify them down to about 1:1500; if you also know which census tract they
work in, you can up your percentages to about 1:20.

But I'm missing the threat. What's an example of where this particular
knowledge (feel free to assume for sake of argument that the pair is actually
unique) leads to either personal disaster or a chilling effect? I presume it
exists, but I'm not seeing how it compares to something like showing your ID
(with address) to use a credit card.

~~~
srn
Part of the point of the paper is to show, yet again, that data that could be
considered sufficiently anonymized by stripping IP addresses names etc. is not
anonymous enough.

Your credit card information identifies you, but you generally don't give your
credit card information to any location based service you might want to use.

Additionally, there's still this thing called cash, or visiting places that
don't require exchanging money.

A location profile could expose information like your doctors, what
restaurants/bars/clubs you like, where you shop, who your friends are, what
political or religious places/events you attend... do I need to go on?

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skmurphy
Summary: your home and work locations represent a simple "hashing function"
that will allow firms to uniquely identify us. This information on the surface
wouldn’t seem to represent a privacy risk but is and it's becoming easier for
third parties to collect with the proliferation of location based services.

~~~
10ren
Ignoring the privacy issues, I think universities would be an exception, as
many student/staff live on/near campus. I suspect people who work from home
would make up a disproportionate number of the collisions (as they reduce two
dimensions into one) - so perhaps their is privacy in that.

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wallflower
> To understand the privacy threats

As Bruce Schneier has written, there is no such thing as privacy.

Bruce Schneier, "Privacy in the age of persistence"

[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/02/privacy_in_the...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/02/privacy_in_the.html)

"It is not possible to make a LASTING compromise between technology and
freedom, because technology is by far the more powerful social force and
continually encroaches on freedom through REPEATED compromises."

-Theodore Kaczynski

~~~
randomwalker
That makes little sense. Schneier was talking about the far future. It's
certainly not an assumption that people make as they go about their daily
lives. "Eventually," we'll be a spacefaring civilization, so why bother with
anything on Earth?

Also, if you're going to claim something absurd like technology and freedom
being incompatible, you're going to have to do better than quoting the
Unabomber.

~~~
DLWormwood
> Also, if you're going to claim something absurd like technology and freedom
> being incompatible, you're going to have to do better than quoting the
> Unabomber.

You're making two mistakes...

1) Technology being abused to curtail freedom isn't "absurd," but a routine
occurrence in our world. From traffic cameras to chipped passports, for every
freedom we gain from technology, we lose at least one.

2) You're shooting the messenger. While I also disagree with his pessimistic
conclusion, there have been many truths said by those we seek to demonize.

~~~
dantheman
I take issue with point #1, that is true in a lot of cases but not necessarily
so, it all depends on what people are willing to accept. While I do agree that
the notion of privacy will always lose to technology, and if you believe that
privacy is key part of freedom (debatable) then I grant you that point.

1\. Counter example: The development of better agriculture freed serfs & at a
later time in the US slaves.

2\. Modern travel has freed people from oppressive regimes around the world.

3\. The internet is having a liberating effect on the freedom and control of
information.

4\. Modern medicine frees us from the threats of many diseases.

Technology can be equally used for good and evil.

~~~
tc
Your definition of freedom, as implied by items 4 & 1, is sloppy and
dangerous. The parent posts use the word freedom in the political sense, as an
antonym to slavery, subjugation, and tyranny.

Modern medicine _raises our standard of living_ by eliminating disease, which
is mostly irrelevant to a discussion of the unique causal effects technology
has on freedom.

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jyothi
I was just thinking about the very same thing yesterday.

Home to work commute tagged with time can help many application to alert high
traffic or better times to travel, car pooling.

It would also be interesting to watch what others are doing in and around my
area at any point of time.

Visualisation would be the key.

~~~
aneesh
Did you read the article? He doesn't think this would be "cool"! He's saying
that this could be used to identify people who thought they were anonymous.
The main point he makes is that people consider the fact identification is
difficult if someone has only one location, but overlook that it's much easier
if someone has two locations.

~~~
jyothi
Yes I have read the article and as other people have pointed out I too am
missing the threat. This is like saying I will pull out the identity of the
person who browsed through my blog and left a comment. It is definitely
possibly to do it over a period of repeated visits. And assuming I spend all
that time to dig out information.

So, instead I am positively noting that you cannot assume it is anonymous and
think of ways I would benefit from it whether identified at an aggregate level
or an approximation or even uniquely.

The author listed few examples which he words as 'exploits' the non-anonymity
and I mentioned few more but rather positively. It might be a very fascinating
view of the web if we can start browsing it from a world map, don't you think
so ?

