ODI Fridays: Why anonymity fails - with Professor Ross Anderson

The extension of the open data programme to personal data such as medical records was based on the hope that personal data could be anonymised. This is turning into a slow-motion political train wreck, with the care.data scandal and the revelation that the hospital episode statistics data sold to numerous companies contained patient postcodes and dates of birth, so the anonymity claims were simply false. Ross Anderson, Professor of Security Engineering at Cambridge, asks: what’s going on?