Pan-Canadian de-identification guidelines for personal health information

The approaches that would work in a Canadian context are not necessarily similar to what would work in other jurisdictions because of differences in privacy laws, values of the population, and the availability of information about the population. [...] For example, the Alberta Health Information Act states that “individually identifying” information, when used to describe health information, means that the identity of the individual who is the subject of the information can be readily ascertained from the information; and “non-identifying” information, when used to describe health information, means that the identity of the individual who is the [...] The attacker may not be the entity E. itself but may be facilitated by E. For example, the data may be shared with a researcher who is very careful and follows good practices for protecting the identity of individuals in s. As part of the research project s/he makes the data available to a number of graduate students and co-investigators. [...] For example, that same researcher may be careful for the duration of the project and not share the data, but then when the project is over sells the computer with all the data on it through a classified ad in the local newspaper. [...] The lower the value of τ. the greater the resources that needs to be spent on anonymizing the data.