Novel Techniques for Data Privacy Protection

Data privacy is an important and far-reaching concept of the modern information technology. Due to its progressive legislation, the high social appreciation of privacy as a social value, the presence of high-calibre Privacy Commissionaires, as well as the leadership of companies such as Privacy Analytics, Canada is perceived as one of the world leaders in data privacy. This project will strengthen and further enhance this leadership position, by presenting new research solutions, by assisting the industry partner in offering new products, and by training a number of students in the techniques of the data privacy. Specifically, we propose to tackle - together with our industrial partner - several interconnected tasks and find solutions that address real privacy concerns which are not met today. For instance, we propose to work on privacy models and techniques that will detect human error and inadvertent privacy leaks in written documents. Another text-centered task related to privacy in the medical communication setting is differentiation between self-disclosed medical information, and such information published by others. We will develop an automated text analysis tool capable of such differentiation. We also propose a novel approach which will enable users of popular social networks to better control who knows what about them. Finally, we propose to work on a model of data privacy that will be used by practitioners (e.g. data curators) to measure the degree of privacy ensured by applying a given privacy protection technique on a given data, as well as the cost of an attack on the protection applied. The common denominator for much of the proposed research is the use of Machine Learning techniques, in which our team has advanced expertise and international leadership. We anchor our research in the areas of importance to Canada's health care sector, where our industrial partner is situated. The solutions we provide will be adopted by Canadian industry to supply better privacy solution in Canada and globally.