Latanya Sweeney
Sweeney made privacy failures measurable and intelligible. Her research on re-identification and de-identification remains essential for evaluating whether data releases protect people in practice.
Latanya Sweeney is a computer scientist and Harvard scholar who founded the Data Privacy Lab and has researched the risks created when supposedly anonymous records can be linked back to people.
Privacy research
Her work on k-anonymity and re-identification made clear that removing direct identifiers does not automatically make data safe to publish. She has also studied discriminatory effects in online systems and helped establish public-interest approaches to technology research.
Policy relevance
Sweeney’s research has informed public discussion of privacy, health data and algorithmic accountability. It is most useful when treated as evidence for context-specific risk assessment rather than as a one-size-fits-all guarantee.
Timeline
- 1997Publishes early research on data re-identification risk.
- 2001Receives a PhD in computer science from MIT.
- 2000sLeads Data Privacy Lab research.
- 2014Publishes research on discrimination in online ad delivery.
- 2021Helps launch Harvard’s Public Interest Tech Lab.
Latanya Sweeney
- Type
- Person
- Era
- 1990s-Present
- Known for
- k-anonymity; Data Privacy Lab; algorithmic fairness; public-interest technology
- Tags
- privacy, k-anonymity, algorithmic-fairness, public-interest-technology
Created by Joas A Santos · Something wrong or want it removed? Open an issue.