Latanya Sweeney facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Latanya Sweeney
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Sweeney at a panel discussion in New York City, November 2017
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| Education | |
| Known for | k-anonymity |
| Scientific career | |
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| Institutions | Harvard University Carnegie Mellon University |
| Thesis | Computational Disclosure Control: Theory and Practice (2001) |
Latanya Arvette Sweeney is an American computer scientist. She is a professor at Harvard University, where she teaches about government and technology. She also leads the Public Interest Tech Lab, which started in 2021. This lab helps make sure technology is used in ways that benefit everyone.
Professor Sweeney is also known for her work on k-anonymity. This is a way to protect people's privacy when sharing data. She famously showed that even if your name is removed, 87% of people in the U.S. can be identified. This can happen just by knowing their birth date, gender, and zip code!
Contents
Learning and Degrees
Latanya Sweeney finished high school in Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1977. She was the top student in her class.
She started studying computer science at MIT. But she left to start her own company. Later, she finished her first degree in computer science at Harvard. In 2001, she earned her Ph.D. in computer science from MIT. She was the first African American woman to achieve this. She said she went back to school to share her amazing discoveries.
Her Work and Discoveries
In 2001, Professor Sweeney started the Data Privacy Lab at Carnegie Mellon University. This lab studies how to keep your personal information safe. She also helped create a journal about privacy technology. Today, she helps lead Currier House at Harvard, a place where students live.
Protecting Health Information
In 1997, Professor Sweeney did an important experiment. She showed how easy it was to find out who owned medical records. She used public information to identify the Governor of Massachusetts, Bill Weld, and link him to his health data.
Her findings were very important for privacy laws. They helped create the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This law protects your health information. Even though her work was groundbreaking, it was hard to get it published at first.
In one of her famous articles, she explained her research. She showed how she could match people's identities to their health records. She used public records like hospital lists and newspaper stories. She concluded that we need better ways to share data safely.
Keeping Medical Data Private
In 1998, Professor Sweeney shared another famous example. She showed that even if names are removed from medical data, people can still be identified. This happens when the medical data is combined with other public lists, like voter lists.
She found that 87% of people in a U.S. dataset could be identified. This was done by combining pieces of information called "quasi-identifiers." These are things like your birth date, gender, and zip code.
Data Privacy Lab at Harvard
Since 2011, Professor Sweeney's Data Privacy Lab at Harvard has been studying data privacy. They look at privacy from many angles. Their goal is to find safe ways to share information.
In 2021, she also started the Public Interest Technology Lab at Harvard. This lab focuses on how technology can serve the public good.
See also
- Datafly algorithm
- Data re-identification
