Safety in Numbers? Group Privacy and Big Data Analytics in the Developing World

Abstract

This chapter argues that group privacy is a necessary element of a global perspective on privacy. Addressing the problem as a new epistemological phenomenon generated by big data analytics, it addresses three main questions: first, is this a privacy or a data protection problem, and what does this say about the way it may be addressed? Second, by resolving the problem of individual identifiability, do we resolve that of groups? And last, is a solution to this problem transferrable, or do different places need different approaches? Focusing on cases drawn mainly from low- and middle-income countries, this chapter uses the issues of human mobility, disease tracking and drone data to demonstrate the tendency of big data to flow across categories and uses, its long half-life as it is shared and reused, and how these characteristics pose particular problems with regard to analysis on the aggregate level.

Keywords: drones, epidemiology, migration, Ebola, mapping, satellites, mobile phones, Kenya, Sudan, Africa, data mining, predictive analytics