sciencemag.org SCIENCE

PRIVACYThe End of

By Martin Enserink and Gilbert Chin

490 30 JANUARY 2015 • VOL 347 ISSUE 6221

From big data to ubiquitous Internet connections, technology empowers researchers and the public—but makes

traditional notions of privacy obsolete

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IMAGE: WILLIA

M DUKE

NEWS

Unmasked p. 492

When your voice betrays you p. 494

Breach of trust p. 495

Game of drones p. 497

Risk of exposure p. 498

Could your pacemaker be hackable?

p. 499

Hiding in plain sight p. 500

Trust me, I’m a medical researcher p. 501

Camouflaging searches in a sea of

fake queries p. 502

PERSPECTIVES

Control use of data to protect privacy

p. 504

What the “right to be forgotten” means

for privacy in a digital age p. 507

REVIEW

Privacy and human behavior in the age of

information p. 509

RELATED ITEMS

▶ NEWS STORY P. 468

▶ PERSPECTIVE P. 479

▶ BOOKS ET AL. P. 481

▶ REPORT P. 536

▶ SCIENCE CAREERS STORIES BY

R. BERNSTEIN AND E. PAIN

▶ PODCAST

▶ sciencemag.org/site/special/privacy

For a key to the data in the art here and on the

cover, search for an encrypted URL and decode it.

INSIDE

S P E C I A L S E C T I O N

At birth, your data trail began. You were given a name, your

height and weight were recorded, and probably a few pictures

were taken. A few years later, you were enrolled in day care,

you received your first birthday party invitation, and you were

recorded in a census. Today, you have a Social Security or na-

tional ID number, bank accounts and credit cards, and a smart

phone that always knows where you are. Perhaps you post

family pictures on Facebook; tweet about politics; and reveal

your changing interests, worries, and desires in thousands of

Google searches. Sometimes you share data intentionally, with friends,

strangers, companies, and governments. But vast amounts of informa-

tion about you are collected with only perfunctory consent—or none at

all. Soon, your entire genome may be sequenced and shared by research-

ers around the world along with your medical records, flying cameras

may hover over your neighborhood, and sophisticated software may

recognize your face as you enter a store or an airport.

For scientists, the vast amounts of data that people shed every day

offer great new opportunities but new dilemmas as well. New compu-

tational techniques can identify people or trace their behavior by com-

bining just a few snippets of data. There are ways to protect the private

information hidden in big data files, but they limit what scientists can

learn; a balance must be struck. Some medical researchers acknowledge

that keeping patient data private is becoming almost impossible;

instead, they’re testing new ways to gain patients’ trust and collabora-

tion. Meanwhile, how we think and feel about privacy isn’t static.

Already, younger people reveal much more about their lives on the Web

than older people do, and our preferences about what we want to keep

private can change depending on the context, the moment, or how we’re

nudged. Privacy as we have known it is ending, and we’re only beginning

to fathom the consequences.

30 JANUARY 2015 • VOL 347 ISSUE 6221 491

This special issue was also edited by Brad Wible and Barbara Jasny.

Published by AAAS

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ber 10, 2018

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The end of privacyMartin Enserink and Gilbert Chin

DOI: 10.1126/science.347.6221.490 (6221), 490-491.347Science 

ARTICLE TOOLS http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6221/490

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