Sumeet Singh

As if appointment of Rod Beckström as director of National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) was not foolish enough, Bush administration couldn’t help tolerating Mr Chertoff’s ideas of privacy. In a public appearance at Canada, he attempted to explain how fingerprints are not his idea of personally identifiable information (personal data). What people, especially those who handle security, must understand that personal data can not be described by confidentiality alone.

What most people do not understand is the difference between personally identifiable information and confidential information, or as Schneier puts it ‘the difference between personal data and secret data. To put it simply, personally identifiable Information (PII) refers to any information that identifies or can be used to identify, contact, or locate the person to whom such information pertains. It has little to do with confidentiality of the information on its own. Postal codes/ zip codes and fingerprints are few such examples of less-confidential personal data.