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Our analysis draws on the legislation, regulatory guidance, and mathematical reasoning to derive a technical concept\u2014\u201cpredicate singling out\u201d\u2014aimed at capturing a core part of GDPR\u2019s intent. Examination of predicate singling out sheds light on the concept of singling out and the question of whether existing technologies protect against such a threat. Conceptually, this work demonstrates the role that principled analysis supported by mathematical argument can and should play in articulating and informing public policy at the interface between law and technology.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.1914598117","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,3,31]],"date-time":"2020-03-31T16:37:33Z","timestamp":1585672653000},"page":"8344-8352","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.cm10313","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":71,"title":["Towards formalizing the GDPR\u2019s notion of singling out"],"prefix":"10.1073","volume":"117","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3492-2447","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Aloni","family":"Cohen","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science &amp; Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215;"},{"name":"School of Law, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215;"},{"name":"Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139;"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6632-8645","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Kobbi","family":"Nissim","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20007"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"341","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,3,31]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_3_1_2","first-page":"1701","article-title":"Broken promises of privacy: Responding to the surprising failure of anonymization","volume":"57","author":"Ohm P.","year":"2010","unstructured":"P. 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Sweeney, \u201cGeneralizing data to provide anonymity when disclosing information\u201d in Proceedings of the 17th ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD-SIGART Symposium on Principles of Database Systems, A. O. Mendelzon, J. Paredaens, Eds. (ACM Press, New York, NY, 1998), p. 188."},{"key":"e_1_3_3_12_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1142\/S0218488502001648"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_13_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"117","DOI":"10.1145\/2746539.2746580","volume-title":"Proceedings of the Forty-Seventh Annual ACM on Symposium on Theory of Computing, STOC 2015","author":"Dwork C.","year":"2015","unstructured":"C. Dwork , \u201cPreserving statistical validity in adaptive data analysis\u201d in Proceedings of the Forty-Seventh Annual ACM on Symposium on Theory of Computing, STOC 2015, R. A. Servedio, R. Rubinfeld, Eds. 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