You can’t buy Congress’s web history – that's not how any of this works
This article fails to take into account that time and time again we&#x27;ve seen that &#x27;anonyimized aggregate data&#x27; is never truly anonymous.<p>In the AOL anonimized data leak there were plenty of individuals identified:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2006&#x2F;08&#x2F;09&#x2F;technology&#x2F;09aol.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2006&#x2F;08&#x2F;09&#x2F;technology&#x2F;09aol.html</a><p>MIT researchers also showed that four anonymous purchases are enough metadata to identify 90% of individuals:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.technologyreview.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;536501&#x2F;data-sets-not-so-anonymous&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.technologyreview.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;536501&#x2F;data-sets-not-so-a...</a><p>And, a personal favorite of mine where researchers from Standford and Princeton are reporting at the World Wide Web Conference this April: &quot;Researchers found that they could identify the person behind an &#x27;anonymized&#x27; data set 70% of the time just by comparing their browsing data to [often public] social media activities&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techdirt.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;20170123&#x2F;08125136548&#x2F;one-more-time-with-feeling-anonymized-user-data-not-really-anonymous.shtml" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techdirt.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;20170123&#x2F;08125136548&#x2F;one-m...</a><p>It would not be hard to buy a zipcode worth of data and compare it to known facts about a person until you de-anonymized it.