In January, President Obama asked for a comprehensive review of policy issues on big data and privacy during his speech on signals intelligence. As a part of the comprehensive review, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) was asked to examine the topic. PCAST setup a working group, co-chaired by Members William Press and Susan Graham, who is also the Chair of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC). The working group has reviewed the technical literature, consulted with experts, and engaged with the broader community of social scientists and law for perspective to produce a report titled Big Data and Privacy: A Technological Perspective.
The Report highlights five recommendations:
- Policy attention should focus more on the actual uses of big data and less on its collections and analysis.
- Policies and regulation, at all levels of government, should not embed particular technological solutions, but rather should be stated in terms of intended outcomes.
- With coordination and encouragement from OSTP, the NITRD agencies should strengthen U.S. research in privacy-related technologies and in the relevant areas of social science that inform the successful application of those technologies.
- OSTP, together with the appropriate educational institutions and professional societies, should encourage increased education and training opportunities concerning privacy protection, including career paths for professionals.
- The United States should take the lead both in the international arena and at home by adopting policies that stimulate the use of practical privacy-protecting technologies that exist today. It can exhibit leadership both by its convening power (for instance, by promoting the creation and adoption of standards) and also by its own procurement practices (such as its own use of privacy-preserving cloud services).
Read the full report here.
Read the White House blog post here.
Learn more about the White House Big Data Review here.
