Chris Whong on The Privacy Implications of Publicly-Available Taxi Trip Data:

“Chris Whong explains how and why he used FOIL to get NYC taxi trip data, how and why he shared it publicly when nobody else had before, and where it’s gone since he shared it. The privacy concerns are twofold: the privacy of taxi drivers, and the privacy of passengers. Chris discusses potential violations of privacy and shows examples of how people have identified individual passenger trips with a small amount of information. Re-identification is possible in some instances, and Chris asks, “Is it such a bad thing?” (The Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC) has limited new FOIL requests, making the new data much less useful to researchers as a result of de-anonymization of medallions and hack licenses.)”

About Databites

Data & Society’s “Databites” speaker series presents timely conversations about the purpose and power of technology, bridging our interdisciplinary research with broader public conversations about the societal implications of data and automation.