Anonymous data : How “anonymous” are they really ?
Problems relating to what data/images/information can be considered as anonymous is one of the major data protection issues of privacy law having an impact in any sector including the Internet of Things and e-health.
In general, anonymous data can be defined by virtue of the method of collection that can never reasonably be connected with the person providing them. This can be accomplished by questionnaires that are returned by mail, questionnaires that are collected by one of a group of subjects and returned to the researcher, or internet surveys. The Article 29 Working Party, a consultancy body of the European Commission on data protection matters, issued an opinion upon anonymization techniques identifying what kind of conducts convert identifiable data into anonymous data for privacy law purposes in order to give guidelines at the topic. According the EU Data Protection Directive 95/46 in assessing whether a person is identifiable through the processed data, account should be taken of all the means « likely easonably » to be used either by the controller or by any other person to identify the said person. (suite…)
