digital, attacks to privacy and to civil rights in general can and are coming by so many other sides  
that those from (properly done) Open Data are a really tiny percentage of the total. 
This is a consequence of the fact that data about us end up online from the most different sources  
(including ourselves and our acquaintances), and that often it would be very hard to discover, never  
mind prove, that they've been used against our interest. There have been concerns, for example, that  
insurance companies may charge higher fees for life insurance to those among their customers  
who... put online a family tree from which it shows that they come from families with an average  
life expectancy lower than usual. 
Assuming such concerns were real, would it always be possible to spot and prove such abuses of  
data,  that  weren't  even  published  by  any  Public  Administration?  Of course, publishing  online 
complete, official Census data of several generations, in a way that would make such automatic  
analysis possible would be a totally different matter. 
Getting rid of all the unjustified concerns about privacy is very simple, at least in theory. All is  
needed to dismiss for good the idea that Open Data is a generalized attack to privacy is to always  
remember and explain that: 
1. Most Open Data have nothing personal to begin with (examples: digital maps, budgets, air  
pollution measurements....) 
2. The majority of data that are directly related to individuals (e.g. things like names and  
address of people with specific diseases, or who were victims of some crime) have no reason 
to be published, nor there is any actual demand for them by Open Data advocates 
3. Exceptions that limit privacy for specific cases and categories of people (e.g. candidates to  
public offices, Government and Parliament members etc...) already exist in many countries 
4. Very often, in practice, Open Data struggles only happen about  when and how  to make  
available in the most effective way for society information that was already recognized as  
public. What to declare public, hence open, is indeed a serious issue (more on this in the next 
paragraph) but is a separate one. 
3.8. Need to better define what is Public Data
Together with citizens education, there is a huge challenge that Governments and the Open Data  
movement will have to face (hopefully together) in 2011 and beyond. This challenge is to update  
and  expand  the  definition  of  Public  Data  and  to  have  it  accepted  by  lawmakers  and  public 
administrators. 
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Copyright  2011 LEM, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna. This work is released under a Creative Commons attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)