The ethics of storing data
The questions raised by any data that is kept: whether to collect it, for how long, in what form, where and at what cost. Minimisation, purpose, retention period, anonymisation and pseudonymisation, dormant data and location.
- 25 cards
- 5 topics
- Free
The outline, topic by topic
Each topic is weighted the way the exam weighs it.
- Concepts
- Questions
- Sort and link
- Scenarios
- Understand
A few cards from the deck
Data minimisation: what is it?
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The principle that only what is strictly necessary for the aim pursued is collected.
A newsletter only needs an email address. A piece of data never collected cannot leak, be claimed by a third party or cost any storage.
A hospital publishes an export of records with no first or last names. Which of these statements is true?
- It can still point to a patient by cross-checking postcode, birth date and sex
- It is anonymous as soon as the first and last names are removed
- It is anonymous if the publication comes with a warning to readers
- It is pseudonymised, and so free of any protection obligation
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It can still point to a patient by cross-checking postcode, birth date and sex
Quasi-identifiers, cross-checked, single out one person: removing the name is not enough. A warning changes nothing, and even pseudonymisation releases nobody from any obligation.
To send a newsletter, only the … is needed: collecting the date of birth goes against the principle of ….
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To send a newsletter, only the email address is needed: collecting the date of birth goes against the principle of minimisation.
For each field, ask what would be lost by not asking for it. If the answer is 'nothing', do not collect it.
Purpose: what is it?
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The specific reason, announced to the person, for which data is collected, and which limits later uses.
It is set before collection. An address given for a delivery does not thereby become usable for another purpose without fresh justification.
'Let's keep everything, it will be useful one day': ten years of named browsing logs sit with a host outside Europe. What are the cause of the risk and the fix?
- Too few backups: multiply the backups with several foreign hosts
- A badly chosen host: keep the whole history but switch to a better-known provider
- No purpose or period set: delete or anonymise, keep only what is useful
- Weak encryption: strengthen the archive's encryption and keep everything as it is
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No purpose or period set: delete or anonymise, keep only what is useful
The danger comes from the retention itself: named data with no purpose or deadline, far from European law, is both useless and exposed. Encryption, the host or backups do not fix what should have been erased.