Why Does Geoprivacy Matter? The Scientific Publication of Confidential Data Presented on Maps

Abstract

We examined published maps containing sensitive data, and the protection methods, if any, that were used. We investigated whether the many published warnings about disclosure risk have been effective in reducing privacy risk. During an 8-year period (2005-2012), 19 journals related to GIScience, geography, spatial crime analysis, and health geography were examined. We identified 41 articles that display actual confidential information and 16 articles where confidential information is protected by the use of a geographical mask. During the investigated time frame, the numbers of articles with unmasked confidential data increased, and in total more than 68,000 home addresses were disclosed. One of the more significant findings of this study is that efforts to instill sensitivity to location privacy and disclosure risk have been relatively unsuccessful.

Keywords

location privacy confidentiality geographical masks disclosure analysis

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Acquisti

Gross

(2006). Imagined communities: Awareness, information sharing, and privacy on the Facebook. In Golle

Danezis

(Eds.), Proceedings of 6th Workshop on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (pp. 36-58). Cambridge, UK: Robinson College.

Armstrong

M. P.

Rushton

Zimmerman

D. L.

(1999). Geographically masking health data to preserve confidentiality. Statistics in Medicine, 18, 497-525.

Beresford

A. R.

Stajano

(2003). Location privacy in pervasive computing. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 2(1), 46-55.

Boulos

M. N. K.

Curtis

A. J.

AbdelMalik

(2009). Musings on privacy issues in health research involving disaggregate geographic data about individuals. International Journal of Health Geographics, 8, Article 46.

Brownstein

J. S.

Cassa

C. A.

Kohane

I. S.

Mandl

K. D.

(2006). An unsupervised classification method for inferring original case locations from low-resolution disease maps. International Journal of Health Geographics, 5, Article 56. doi:10.1186/1476-072X-5-56

Burdon

(2010). Privacy invasive geo-mashups: Privacy 2.0 and the limits of first generation information privacy laws. University of Illinois Journal of Law Technology & Policy, 1, 1-50.

Burrough

Craglia

Masser

I. A. N.

Rhind

(1997). Decision makers’ perspectives on European geographic information policy issues. Transactions in GIS, 2, 61-71.

Caron

Roche

Goyer

Jaton

(2008). GIScience journals ranking and evaluation: An international Delphi study. Transactions in GIS, 12, 293-321.

Cassa

C. A.

Grannis

S. J.

Overhage

J. M.

Mandl

K. D.

(2006). A context-sensitive approach to anonymizing spatial surveillance data: Impact on outbreak detection. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 13, 160-165.

10.

Cassa

C. A.

Wieland

S. C.

Mandl

K. D.

(2008). Re-identification of home addresses from spatial locations anonymized by Gaussian skew. International Journal of Health Geographics, 77, Article 45. doi:10.1186/1476-072X-7-45

11.

Chainey

Ratcliffe

(2005). GIS and crime mapping. London, England: John Wiley.

12.

Christen

(2006, December). Privacy-preserving data linkage and geocoding: Current approaches and research directions. Paper presented at the ICDM 2006, Sixth IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, Workshops, Hong Kong.

13.

Cooper

(2008). Sharing data and results with study participants: Report on a survey of cultural anthropologists. Journal of Research on Human Research Ethics, 3(4), 19-34.

14.

Cottrill

C. D.

(2011). Location privacy: Who protects? URISA: Journal-Urban and Regional Information Systems Association, 23(2), 49-59.

15.

Cristofaro

E. D.

Soriente

Tsudik

Williams

(2012, May). Hummingbird: Privacy at the time of twitter. In IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (pp. 285-299), San Francisco, CA.

16.

Curtis

Mills

J. W.

Agustin

Cockburn

(2011). Confidentiality risks in fine scale aggregations of health data. Computers Environment and Urban Systems, 35, 57-64.

17.

Curtis

A. J.

Mills

J. W.

Leitner

(2006). Spatial confidentiality and GIS: Re-engineering mortality locations from published maps about Hurricane Katrina. International Journal of Health Geographics, 5, Article 44. doi:10.1186/1476-072X-5-44

18.

Eng

S. B.

Werker

D. H.

King

A. S.

Marion

S. A.

Bell

Issac-Renton

J. L.

Bowie

W. R.

(1999). Computer-generated dot maps as an epidemiologic tool: Investigating an outbreak of toxoplasmosis. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 5, 815-819.

19.

Ex-burglars say newspaper’s gun map would’ve made the job easier, safer. (2013, January 6). FoxNews. Retrieved from http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/01/04/ex-burglars-say-newspapers-gun-map-wouldve-made-job-easier-safer/

20.

Facebook “friend” suspected in Burglary. (2010, March 25). CBS News. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/25/earlyshow/main6331796.shtml?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.2

21.

Fefferman

N. H.

O’Neil

E. A.

Naumova

E. N.

(2005). Confidentiality and confidence: Is data aggregation a means to achieve both? Journal of Public Health Policy, 26, 430-449.

22.

Fleuret

Gerber

Schneider

(2010). Predicting and mapping the location of an estimated population from a survey: An applied method. Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography, Article 494. doi:10.4000/cybergeo.22999

23.

Grubesic

T. H.

Mack

E. A.

(2008). Spatio-temporal interaction of urban crime. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 24, 285-306.

24.

Gutmann

M. P.

Stern

P. C.

(2007). Putting people on the map: Protecting confidentiality with linked social-spatial data. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

25.

Henderson

(2014, March 24). Satellite images expose Burma’s ethnic cleansing. The Times. Retrieved from http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/article2607740.ece

26.

Information Commissioner’s Office. (2012). Crime-mapping and geo-spatial crime data: Privacy and transparency principles (20140226 Version: 3.5). Cheshire, UK.

27.

Jacquez

G. M.

(1998). GIS as an enabling technology. In Gatrell

Loytonen

(Eds.), GIS and health (pp. 17-28). Philadelphia, PA: Taylor & Francis.

28.

Kloog

Haim

Portnov

B. A.

(2009). Using kernel density function as an urban analysis tool: Investigating the association between nightlight exposure and the incidence of breast cancer in Haifa, Israel. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 33, 55-63.

29.

Kounadi

Lampoltshammer

T. J.

Leitner

Heistracher

(2013). Accuracy and privacy aspects in free online reverse geocoding services. Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 40, 140-153.

30.

Krumm

(2007). Inference attacks on location tracks. In LaMarca

Langheinrich

Truong

(Eds.), Lecture notes in computer science. Vol. 4480, pervasive computing (pp. 127-143). Berlin, Germany: Springer.

31.

Kwan

M. P.

Casas

Schmitz

B. C.

(2004). Protection of geoprivacy and accuracy of spatial information: How effective are geographical masks? Cartographica, 39, 15-28.

32.

Leitner

Curtis

(2004). Cartographic guidelines for geographically masking the locations of confidential point data. Cartographic Perspectives, 49, 22-39.

33.

Leitner

Curtis

(2006). A first step towards a framework for presenting the location of confidential point data on maps—Results of an empirical perceptual study. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 20, 813-822.

34.

Leitner

Mills

J. W.

Curtis

(2007). Can novices to geospatial technology compromise spatial confidentially? Kartographische Nachrichten/Cartographic News, 57(2), 78-84.

35.

Mao

Shuai

Kapadia

(2011, October). Loose tweets: An analysis of privacy leaks on twitter. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society, WPES ’11 (pp. 1-12), Chicago, IL: ACM.

36.

Marsh

Melville

(2011). Moral panics and the British media—A look at some contemporary “folk devils.” Internet Journal of Criminology. Available from www.internet-journalofcriminology.com

37.

McCarthy

(2010, February 17). The dark side of geo: PleaseRobMe.com. CNet News. Retrieved from http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10454981-36.html

38.

O’Rourke

J. M.

Roehrig

Heeringa

S. G.

Reed

B. G.

Birdsall

W. C.

Overcashier

Zidar

(2006). Solving problems of disclosure risk while retaining key analytic uses of publicly released microdata. Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, 1(3), 63-84.

39.

Pew Internet and American Life Project. (2009). Adults and social network websites. Retrieved from http://www.pew-internet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2009/PIP_Adult_social_networking_data_memo_FINAL.pdf.pdf

40.

Ratcliffe

J. H.

(2002). Damned if you don’t, damned if you do: Crime mapping and its implications in the real world. Policing & Society, 12, 211-225.

41.

Ritz

(2013, January 13). House identified on NY paper’s “gun map” burglarized- and the robbers went straight for the guns. The Blaze. Retrieved form http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/13/house-identified-on-ny-papers-gun-map-burglarized-and-the-robbers-went-straight-for-the-guns/

42.

Rohli

R. V.

Liu

(2008). Citation of research in journals of interest to applied geographers. Applied Geography, 28, 151-167.

43.

Townsley

Homel

Chaseling

(2003). Infectious burglaries. A test of the near repeat hypothesis. British Journal of Criminology, 43, 615-633.

44.

Wartell

McEwen

J. T.

(2001, July). Privacy in the information age: A guide for sharing crime maps and spatial data series (Research report). Washington, DC: Institute for Law and Justice.

45.

Zimmerman

D. L.

Pavlik

(2008). Quantifying the effects of mask metadata disclosure and multiple releases on the confidentiality of geographically masked health data. Geographical Analysis, 40, 52-76.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.69 MB