Mecs tsd

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(Personal Data & Sensitive Personal Data)
(Personal Data & Sensitive Personal Data)
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What is personal data? There is good information about personal data
What is personal data? There is good information about personal data
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from the Data Directorate [https://www.datatilsynet.no/om-personvern/personopplysninger/ (inNorwegian)]. Personal data is data that can identify a person and
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from the Data Directorate [https://www.datatilsynet.no/om-personvern/personopplysninger/ (in Norwegian)]. Personal data is data that can identify a person and
includes information like:
includes information like:

Revision as of 14:01, 5 October 2017

Contents

TSD for MECS

UiO offers a service for sensitive data (tjenester for sensitivdata or TSD). We store all our personal data about people in TSD.

Personal Data & Sensitive Personal Data

Since MECS involves research on people, it necessarily will be collecting personal data about these people. Depending on the activities that we do, we may also end up collecting sensitive personal information.

What is personal data? There is good information about personal data from the Data Directorate (in Norwegian). Personal data is data that can identify a person and includes information like:

  • name
  • birth date
  • contact information
  • picture
  • behavior patterns

Sensitive personal information includes things like a person's race, ethnicity background, health or disabilities, political, relegious, or philiophical opinions, sexual relationships, and membership in unions. This needs to be protected at a higher level.

Regardless of whether the personal data is sensitive or not, we need to be good about keeping the personal data safe so that people can trust us with their data. One doesn't have to look far to find data about people can be stolen. Ideally, we should avoid being one of those stories.

Why can we have access to and use personal data?

Research projects don't automatically get access to this data. Any project that collects data from people needs to be registered with the Directorate (Datatilsynet). While we can do that directly, it requires some administration work that is more work than an average researcher wants. Instutions like UiO have a privacy vernombud whose job is do the registration and maintain dialogue with the Data Directorate. For UiO, that means using the Center for Research Data (Norsk senter for forskningsdata) or simply NSD for short.

At the start of the project, we created an application that we sent to the NSD. This included information about what kind of data we plan to collect, what activities we will do to collect it, how we inform people about this collection, where we store the data, how long we will keep the data, and what happens to the data at the end of the project. In addition, we needed to include samples of our informed consent form and the interview guides we were using. The application along with their response is included on ◊xref[#:to-id "bifrost-files"]{bifrost}. In general, as long as we follow what we've reported in the application, we can collect the data. If we need to do something different, that's fine, but we need to send a request for change to the NSD and it takes some time for it to be approved.

Now that we have an idea about what sensitive data is and how we take care of it here in the project. Let's look at how we can handle the data.

Guidelines for handling personal data

This is not an exhaustive list, but it should give you a basic idea about what things to consider when working with personal data. Some of these things make life more difficult for us, but it's better for the people's data. Consider if the situation was different, how would you like your personal data leaked by a researcher (even if the researcher meant well).

Guidelines are always just that, guidelines. You may run into a situation where following this practice will make the data vulnerable, or you have to make the best of a bad situation. The important thing is that you consider the different issues and the need of keeping the data safe.

Keep unencrypted data off the Internet

This may be obvious, but the personal data should not go over the Internet. Data that goes over the Internet can be copied. If it's unencrypted, it can be readily used by others. If you must send the data over the Interent, please encrypt the data.

To make this easier, minimize storing data on devices that will automatically upload data. For example, many phones are automatically set up to upload pictures and films that are taken on the phone or stored on the phone. This functionality is also set up on laptops. Since the upload is automatic, you may not notice it until data is already uploaded, making it difficult to remove. This can make it difficult to simply look at something without it being uploaded behind your back. If you must do this, consider disconnecting from the Internet completely.

Using a recording device that doesn't have an Internet connection eliminates this issues when the data is at rest or the device is being used.

Sending unencrypted data via email is also a bad idea. You can think of email messages as text written on the back of postcards. Anyone who wants to can read it. Though it might be OK between UiO addresses, since it would likely stay on the same server, you don't know where the data goes afterwards (e.g., onto a machine that automatically uploads pictures). Just don't send unencrypted data.

Encrypt your data

Encryption is a way of making sure that data is safer. Encryption scrambles the data so that it unreadable except for people that know how to decrypt the data. Usually this requires some sort of knowlegde, a key, or both. Encrypted data can also be used as a way of permantly deleting data, especially in a cloud environment where you have no idea how many copies of your data exist. If the key to decrypt data is destroyed, there is no realistic way to decrypt the data. So, encrypting personal data will make it safe from being casually read by anyone.

Unfortunately, encryption is hard. First, because of the concepts that are involved. Second, because of the quality of the tools for encryption. We have tools available in the TSD section that make things easier, but it is far from perfect.

This data needs to be protected at a higher level. We choose the TSD because it gives us a known level of security without us having to maintain everything ourselves. It is straight-forward to use.

Should something be in TSD or not?

The simple rule of thumb of if something should be in the TSD or not is if it involves people who are informants or participating in the project, but are not officially part of the project (i.e., they aren't listed as the project partners). If you collect information from participants, especially if it's pictures, contact information, or recordings. It should go on the TSD.

Getting access to TSD

MECS’s project ID is: p260.

Access to TSD is controlled. For MECS the project's TSD administrator is Trenton. Contact him and he will authorize you. Once you have been authorized, you need to | register to become a user on TSD. You'll need access to your minID account for a digital signature and the project ID (above).

Using TSD

There is already a | TSD user guide written by the university. It's not the most exciting read, but it works well if you follow it closely. This section is mostly for notes that we have found while using TSD during the project.

Import/export of data for advanced users

The information provided by TSD is fine, but if you know how to use | GPG you can use the project's public key to encrypt data before it is sent to or from the server.

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