The Difficulty In Getting a Machine To Forget Anything

An anonymous reader writes: When personal information ends up in the analytical whirlpool of big data, it almost inevitably becomes orphaned from any permissions framework that the discloser granted for its original use; machine learning systems, commercial and otherwise, end up deriving properties and models from the data until the replication, duplication and derivation of that data can never hoped to be controlled or 'called back' by the originator. But researchers now propose a revision which can be imposed upon existing machine-learning frameworks, interposing a 'summation' layer between user data and the learning system, effectively tokenising the information without anonymising it, and providing an auditable path whereby withdrawal of the user information would ripple through all iterations of systems which have utilized it — genuine 'cancellation' of data.

Comments

Or

[penguinoid]

Or, you could "accidentally" keep the data, and sell it.

How about if we OWN our personal information?

[elwinc]

Imagine if we owned our personal information as a form of intellectual property? Big corporations have gotten pretty good at protecting their intellectual property rights. Maybe it's time for us ordinary folks to own our personal information. Then we could license it to companies for particular uses, but they wouldn't have the right to sell it without our permission.

Good luck with that ...

[gstoddart]

Without laws enforcing it, even if you had a mechanism none of those corporations would follow it.

They seem to think it is their right to buy and sell our information.

Even if you had laws enforcing it, I bet half of them would lie and keep it anyway. The shady assholes feeding the "big data" industry have far too much money at stake to ever allow constraints on how they use "our" data.

They'd just pay off the politicians to pass laws clarifying it's their data, they're entitled to it, and we don't get a vote.

Just like always.