Responding to Some Challenges Posed by the Re-identification of Anonymized Personal Data

In this paper, we examine a cluster of ethical controversies generated by the reidentification of anonymized personal data in the context of big data analytics, with particular attention to the implications for personal privacy. Our paper is organized into two main parts. Part One examines some ethical problems involving re-identification of personally identifiable information (PII) in large data sets. Part Two begins with a brief description of Moor and Weckert’s Dynamic Ethics (DE) and Nissenbaum’s Contextual Integrity (CI) Frameworks. We then investigate whether these frameworks, used together, can provide us with a more robust scheme for analyzing privacy concerns that arise in the re-identification process (as well as within the larger context of big data analytics). This paper does not specifically address re-identification-related privacy concerns that arise in the context of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Instead, we examine those issues in a separate work