We're often told how valuable our personal data is, and how we ought to keep it all as close to our chest as possible in order to maintain our privacy, thus stopping people from stealing our identity, clearing our bank accounts and operating international drugs cartels under our name. But a couple of examples have surfaced this week of how anonymized data collection can be harnessed for the good of the general public. Researchers at UC Berkeley, along with Nokia, have just launched the Mobile Millenium Project, a voluntary scheme where GPS data from the mobile phones of drivers is used to collate a real-time traffic map of the area. And Google – presumably anxious to deflect criticism for using our search data to sling advertising back at us – is using the same data to plot outbreaks of flu across the US.
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