Google executive warns against sharing of citizen data, even if anonymized

Google’s Chief Privacy Officer, Keith Enright, has warned policymakers that frequent and large-scale sharing of citizen data, even if anonymized, can damage users’ privacy. Pointing to research that shows data sets lose their anonymity if shared consistently over time, he said: “I would encourage policymakers and companies to be extremely circumspect while proceeding in that direction.”

Anonymization is a technique that removes or modifies personally identifiable information, resulting in data that cannot be associated with any one individual. Google says it can build safe and valuable products for its search services by using anonymized data.