PCAST Releases Report on Big Data and Privacy

Earlier this year, President Obama asked his counselor John Podesta to lead a comprehensive review of policy issues at the intersection of big data and privacy. As a contribution to that review, he asked his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) to examine current and likely future capabilities of key technologies, both those associated with the collection, analysis, and use of big data and those that can help to preserve privacy. Over the past 90 days, we have reviewed the technical literature, consulted with additional experts whose research or product-development activity focuses on the key technologies, engaged complementary perspectives from social science and the law to help put our technical insights into perspective, and deliberated over what we were learning.

Today, PCAST is releasing its analysis via a new report, Big Data: A Technological Perspective, which details the technical aspects of big data and privacy. The ubiquity of computing and electronic communication technologies has led to the exponential growth of data from both digital and analog sources. New technical abilities to gather, analyze, disseminate, and preserve vast quantities of data raise new concerns about the nature of privacy and the means by which individual privacy might be compromised or protected.

Link to full article and report

Article text from the WhiteHouse.gov Blog