<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>The requirement to anonymise data sets that are to be released for secondary analysis should be balanced by the need to allow their analysis to provide efficient and consistent parameter estimates. The proposal in this article is to integrate the process of anonymisation and data analysis. The first stage uses the addition of random noise with known distributional properties to some or all variables in a released (already pseudonymised) data set, in which the values of some identifying and sensitive variables for data subjects of interest are also available to an external ‘attacker’ who wishes to identify those data subjects in order to interrogate their records in the data set. The second stage of the analysis consists of specifying the model of interest so that parameter estimation accounts for the added noise. Where the characteristics of the noise are made available to the analyst by the data provider, we propose a new method that allows a valid analysis. This is formally a measurement error model and we describe a Bayesian MCMC algorithm that recovers consistent estimates of the true model parameters. A new method for handling categorical data is presented. The article shows how an appropriate noise distribution can be determined.</p></abstract>

The requirement to anonymise data sets that are to be released for secondary analysis should be balanced by the need to allow their analysis to provide efficient and consistent parameter estimates. The proposal in this article is to integrate the process of anonymisation and data analysis. The first stage uses the addition of random noise with known distributional properties to some or all variables in a released (already pseudonymised) data set, in which the values of some identifying and sensitive variables for data subjects of interest are also available to an external ‘attacker’ who wishes to identify those data subjects in order to interrogate their records in the data set. The second stage of the analysis consists of specifying the model of interest so that parameter estimation accounts for the added noise. Where the characteristics of the noise are made available to the analyst by the data provider, we propose a new method that allows a valid analysis. This is formally a measurement error model and we describe a Bayesian MCMC algorithm that recovers consistent estimates of the true model parameters. A new method for handling categorical data is presented. The article shows how an appropriate noise distribution can be determined.

A Probabilistic Procedure for Anonymisation, for Assessing the Risk of Re-identification and for the Analysis of Perturbed Data Sets

Journal of Official Statistics

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

The requirement to anonymise data sets that are to be released for secondary analysis should be balanced by the need to allow their analysis to provide...

A Probabilistic Procedure for Anonymisation, for Assessing the Risk of Re-identification and for the Analysis of Perturbed Data Sets

Published Online: Mar 17, 2020

Page range: 89 - 115

Received: May 01, 2018

Accepted: Aug 01, 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jos-2020-0005

Keywords
Additive noise, anonymisation, measurement error, record linkage

© 2020 Harvey Goldstein et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

A Probabilistic Procedure for Anonymisation, for Assessing the Risk of Re-identification and for the Analysis of Perturbed Data Sets

Published Online: Mar 17, 2020

Page range: 89 - 115

Received: May 01, 2018

Accepted: Aug 01, 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jos-2020-0005

KeywordsAdditive noise, anonymisation, measurement error, record linkage

© 2020 Harvey Goldstein et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
Additive noise, anonymisation, measurement error, record linkage