[gnso-rds-pdp-wg] The principle for thin data (was Re: Principle on Proportionality for "Thin Data"access)

[Stephanie Perrin]

Your summary today was great Andrew.

I am not arguing about the disclosure of thin data.  We already voted on 
unauthenticated mandatory disclosure, weeks ago (or at least it feels 
like weeks ago).  Lets please move on.  We are debating this yet again, 
because people keep asking, is thin data personal? [lots of people 
missed the last call] The answer is yes (IMHO).  Does that mean it 
cannot be disclosed?  The answer is no.  Does the proportionality 
principle apply?  Yes.  Have we already gone through this? Yes.  Can we 
come back to it?  Yes, but hopefully only if we have to.....we will have 
to when we get to data elements.

cheers Stephanie
PS a fundamental problem here is that people try to categorize 
information that in their view should be disclosed, as not personal 
information.  This fight has gone on for years over IP address, for 
instance.  The important question is not actually whether it is personal 
data or not, it is "do you need to disclose it to make things 
work?"....and if the answer is yes then you try to mitigate the 
disclosure and try to keep it minimized to what is absolutely required.  
Hence the PIA, which should employ both data minimization and the test 
in the proportionality principle as techniques to evaluate data elements.
A good and really simple example is a phone number.  IS it personal 
info?  (the telcos fought for years, trying to claim they owned it and 
it was not personal).  Obviously it pertains to you, people feel 
strongly that it is personal (culturally relative of course but...) and 
yet if noone ever learns your number your phone won't ever receive a 
call.  That does not mean you have to disclose it everywhere.....only 
where necessary.  And it should mean that it does not have to follow you 
everywhere, but that is becoming increasingly hard to manage....

By the way, informed consent is not the same as transparency 
requirements.  Transparency requirements are exactly that....you have to 
be transparent about what you are doing with data.  Let us not conflate 
that with consent.

I will quit now and stop trying to answer questions.  I would like to 
humbly suggest, however, that we have a real shortage of basic 
understanding of how data protection law works and is interpreted.  If 
there is a data protection law expert that folks might listen to, we 
should hire that person to advise us.  It might save a lot of time.


On 2017-05-31 16:00, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 03:20:59PM -0400, Stephanie Perrin wrote:
>> That does not mean we need to protect it, it means we have to examine it in
>> terms of DP law.  May I repeat the suggestion that Canatacci made in
>> Copenhagen in response to a question.....(I forget the precise question he
>> was asked, sorry). If you want to figure out whether you have to protect
>> something or not, do a privacy impact assessment.
> As I think I've said more than once in this thread, I think we _have_
> done that assessment and I think the answers are obvious and I think
> therefore that there is nothing more to say about this principle in
> respect of thin data:
>
>      - the data is either necessary for the operation of the system
>        itself or else necessary for distributed operation and
>        troubleshooting on the Internet.
>
>      - the data does not expose identifying information about anyone,
>        except in rather strained examples where the identifying
>        information is already completely available via other means.
>
> What more is one supposed to do?
>
> Best regards,
>
> A
>

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