In June, our team spoke at two events on synthetic data. One organized by the European Data Protection Supervisor, one by PUBLIC in the presence of Germany's Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI), Pr. Ulrich Kelber.
For us, it’s a great signal to hear regulators and public organizations discussing the applications and implementations of synthetic data as a privacy protection mechanism. In his introductory remarks, Pr. Kelber declared that anonymization was probably the most important tool to consider when implementing data protection mechanisms. But one question remained open: how does anonymization technically translate from a legal perspective?
Pr. Kelber said the BfDI was aware that democratizing synthetic data was challenging without explicit support within the European legal framework. The commissioner agreed that regulators had to advise on the use of new technology as privacy protection mechanisms. He mentioned that the BfDi was currently working on providing new guidelines around anonymization technology.
Such document would complement the work on the subject. In 2014, the WP29 had issued recommendations on anonymization after evaluating existing techniques against the EU legal framework and providing recommendations given their re-identification risks. It followed the release of a code of practice on anonymization released by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office in 2012. Still, today, technical recommendations from the regulator are lacking, which led some sectors to organize their own initiative to help further develop best practices for anonymization.
However, these events are encouraging signs, and we are looking forward to reading more recommendations on the subject. In this month's edition, you'll find event replays and resources.
Happy reading!
The Statice team
