How To Reconcile Big Data and Privacy

Scientific American: In many ways “big data” and “encryption” are antithetical. The former involves harvesting, storing and analyzing information to reveal patterns that researchers, law enforcement and industry can use to their benefit. The goal of the latter is to obscure that data from prying eyes. That tension was at the core of a conference this week co-hosted by the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.), in which more than a dozen experts from academia, politics and industry explored ways encryption and other privacy-oriented technologies might protect the information at involved in big data efforts.

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