UK Backs Off From Banning Reidentification Research (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The United Kingdom has recently debated banning reidentification in its new data privacy law. This proposal has quickly been identified as dangerous and criticized, as it was argued this is not only ineffective but would also put at risk legitimate security and privacy researchers. Following public outcry, the UK government amended the bill to include safe-guards allowing researchers to study anonymization weaknesses. Researchers will also gain a new channel of disclosure via the Information Commissioner Office (ICO). According to The Guardian, "Researchers will have to notify the ICO within three days of successfully deanonymizing data, and demonstrate that they had acted in the public interest and without intention to cause damage or distress in re-identifying data."

Comments

Re:What was the UK gov so protective of?

[Pinky's Brain]

Its monopoly. Their security agencies being able to do reverse ID lookups on snippets of data gives them power. When Google and everyone else start doing it nilly willy it tips off the bad guys, costs them power.

So hurray for governments greedy of power I guess ...