ACM Technology Policy Council Releases TechBrief on Data Privacy Protection
July 25, 2024
ACM's global Technology Policy Council has released its "TechBrief: Data Privacy Protection." The TechBrief concerns the proliferation of data collection, advanced algorithms, and powerful computers which have made it easy to piece together information about individuals’ private lives from public information—even as controls over information privacy become increasingly ineffective.
The ACM TechBrief states that traditional approaches to anonymization, deidentification, and disclosure control fail to protect information at its current scale and are entirely unable to deal with new ways of utilizing information such as generative AI, and that inherently imperfect legal and technical solutions must balance individuals’ and stakeholders’ needs for data privacy and accuracy. In an era of ubiquitous data collection and massive computing capacity, society faces unprecedented challenges to protecting information.
ACM’s TechBriefs are designed to complement ACM’s activities in the policy arena and to inform policymakers, the public, and others about the nature and implications of information technologies. Previous ACM TechBriefs focused on a automated vehicles, trusted AI, the data trust deficit, safer algorithmic systems, generative AI, climate change, facial recognition, smart cities, quantum simulation, and election auditing. Topics under consideration for future issues include media disinformation, technology abuse, accessibility and more.
You can subscribe to automatically receive each quarterly TechBrief as it is published. Simply send an email with a single line in the body of the message that reads: "subscribe ACM-tpc-tech-briefs" followed by your first and last names. An automated reply will ask you to confirm your subscription to activate it.
