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Re:OpenTraffic: a free, global traffic speed data set linked... by michaelt on Tuesday November 24, 2015 @08:18AM (#10620481)
Even if they release the computed average road speeds, it would be difficult for them to release the individual traces while maintaining user privacy.

After all, if a GPS trace starts at my home and ends at my work, that's going to be pretty easy to de-anonymise.

Re:OpenTraffic: a free, global traffic speed data set linked... by anc84 on Tuesday November 24, 2015 @08:46AM (#10620633)
That should be a choice up to each person with a sensible default. You could let users define home/work zones where no data would be shared. You could add a bit of delay to the data transfer to be able to say "don't send anything from the first and last X minutes of moving".

OSM is full of GPS traces volunteered from thousands or people. The NYC taxi data set is not that different and includes exactly the data you describe.

I very much find the taxi data a inconsiderate breach of people's privacy as I doubt they were aware that this data might become available. But I consider volunteered detailed trace data perfectly fine and actually necessary for a open platform as you cannot reproduce results otherwise.

Re:OpenTraffic: a free, global traffic speed data set linked... by maxerickson on Tuesday November 24, 2015 @08:21AM (#10620500)
Their architecture plan makes this clear, the idea is to only publicly share the anonymized data:

https://github.com/opentraffic/architecture

Re:OpenTraffic: a free, global traffic speed data set linked... by striking on Tuesday November 24, 2015 @01:45PM (#10622626)
But someone is keeping data that can be de-anonymized? That sounds dangerous.