‘Privacy and Big Data: Who can access my data? Who owns my data?’

Should we be afraid of “Big Data”? Yes, you know, the collection of data about you which has been gathered and processed thanks to information technology. Admittedly, the major developments in the field have remarkable applications in the scientific domain enabling, for example, people to understand climatic or atmospheric phenomena which previously seemed obscure. But when the information which is circulating is about our personal life, the invention suddenly turns into some kind of parasite which could easily destroy our private life without our knowledge. Dino Pedreschi and Luca De Biase, two eminent specialists in these matters, will be at the Centre for Fine Arts to discuss the subject and explain how we can prevent Big Data from one day turning into a new Big Brother.

Dino Pedreschi is professor of computer science at the University of Pisa and a pioneer in research into mobility data mining, social network mining and privacy-preserving data mining. In 2009, he received a Google Research Award for his research into privacy-preserving data mining.

Luca De Biase is the founder and editor in chief of “Nòva24”, the creativity, science and technology supplement of the Italian newspaper “Il Sole 24 Ore”. He is the visiting professor at the Università di Padova and member of the scientific committee of the Master’s in Communication Sciences in Sissa in the province of Trieste in Italy.