IDENTITY INFORMATION DE-IDENTIFICATION DEVICE

• US 20130138698A1
• Filed: 04/05/2011
• Published: 05/30/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 05/19/2010
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
• Inventors: Sato, Yoshinori, Harada, Kunihiko, Togashi, Yumiko
• Application Number:
  US13/697,904
• Publication Number:
  US 20130138698A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/797
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2246 Trees, e.g. B+trees
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/6254 by anonymising data, e.g. decorrelating personal data from the owner's identification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/6263 during internet communication, e.g. revealing personal data from cookies
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2145 Inheriting rights or properties, e.g., propagation of permissions or restrictions within a hierarchy

Abstract

De-identification device for automatically configuring a general hierarchy tree of attribute values of identity information. The provided de-identification device quantitatively evaluates the amount of information which is lost when generalizing an attribute value, and can thereby automatically assess priorities between de-identified data and between data that is being de-identified. Information of each person includes attribute values of the person for a plurality of attributes. De-identification is achieved by obfuscating the attribute values, and a structure in which attribute values to be obfuscated are expressed in a tree structure according to the level of obfuscation is called a general hierarchy tree. The disclosed identity information de-identification device achieves automatic configuration by configuring a tree using frequency information of attribute values. By defining a lost information amount metric means, using the general hierarchy tree, in formation amount loss between two de-identified data or between data being de-identified is quantitively assessed.

Claims

1. A personal information anonymization device, comprising:

a personal information storing unit configured to store one or more personal information formed of an attribute value for every attribute;

a generalization hierarchy tree automatic generation unit configured to select one attribute and automatically configure a generalization hierarchy tree that represents a dominant concept of each attribute value which occurs in the input personal information for each attribute as a tree structure in accordance with a level of obfuscation using a frequency obtaining unit that counts the number of input personal information having the attribute value for every attribute value that occurs in the selected attribute; and

a unit configured to recode the input personal information using the generalization hierarchy tree generated for each attribute using the generalization hierarchy tree automatic generation unit.

2. The personal information anonymization device according to claim 1, wherein the recoding unit includes a lost information amount metric unit configured to

calculate an amount of information lost at the time of obfuscating one attribute value of one personal information using the automatically generated generalization hierarchy tree.

3. The personal information anonymization device according to claim 2, wherein the lost information amount metric unit includes a node frequency obtaining

unit that, in the case of a leaf, counts occurrence frequencies of nodes of the automatically generated generalization hierarchy tree as the number of personal information in which an attribute value indicated by the leaf occurs and in the case of an internal node, counts the occurrence frequencies of nodes of the automatically generated generalization hierarchy tree as a total frequency of nodes which are grandchildren of an external node and leaves, and calculates a lost information amount when a node a corresponding to each attribute value of the one input personal information is obfuscated to a node b which is a grandparent thereof by −

log(frequency of a/frequency of b).

4. The personal information anonymization device according to claim 3, further comprising:

a unit configured to output a value obtained by replacing each of attribute values of anonymous information generated using the recoding unit with an attribute value of a leaf c with a possibility of a frequency of c/a frequency of b, for one or more leaves which are grandchildren of the attribute value when the attribute value is the node a of the generalization hierarchy tree using the node frequency obtained using the node frequency obtaining unit.

5. The personal information anonymization device according to claim 1, further comprising:

a unit configured to output a value obtained by replacing each of attribute values of anonymous information generated using the recoding unit with an attribute value of the leaf c with a possibility of a frequency of c/a frequency of a, for one or more leaves which are grandchildren of the attribute value when the attribute value is the node a of the generalization hierarchy tree using the node frequency obtaining unit that, in the case of a leaf, counts occurrence frequencies of nodes of the generalization hierarchy tree as the number of the input personal information in which an attribute value indicated by the leaf occurs and in the case of an internal node, counts the occurrence frequencies of nodes of the generalization hierarchy tree as a total frequency of nodes which are grandchildren of an external node and leaves.

6. The personal information anonymization device according to claim 1,

wherein the generalization hierarchy tree automatic generation unit generates a Huffman coding tree using a frequency obtained by the frequency obtaining unit.

7. The personal information anonymization device according to claim 1,

wherein the generalization hierarchy tree automatic generation unit generates a Shannon-Fano coding tree using a frequency obtained by the frequency obtaining unit.

8. The personal information anonymization device according to claim 1, wherein the generalization hierarchy tree automatic generation unit generates a Hu-Tucker coding tree using a frequency obtained by the frequency obtaining unit and order information which is defined in advance as an attribute value of the attribute.

9. The personal information anonymization device according to claim 1, further comprising:

a unit configured to store the automatically configured generalization hierarchy tree.

12. The personal information anonymization device according to claim 1, further comprising:

a user defined hierarchy tree storing unit configured to store a user defined hierarchy tree in which some of nodes of a generalization hierarchy tree of an attribute are defined; and

a generalization hierarchy tree automatic generation unit based on a user defined hierarchy tree configured to automatically generate a generalization hierarchy tree using the user defined hierarchy tree and a frequency obtained by the frequency obtaining unit.

13. The personal information anonymization device according to claim 12, wherein the generalization hierarchy tree automatic generation unit based on the user

defined hierarchy tree generates a Huffman coding tree using the user defined hierarchy tree and the frequency obtained by the frequency obtaining unit.

14. The personal information anonymization device according to claim 12,

wherein the generalization hierarchy tree automatic generation unit based on the user defined hierarchy tree generates a Shannon-Fano coding tree using the user defined hierarchy tree and the frequency obtained by the frequency obtaining unit.

15. The personal information anonymization device according to claim 12,

wherein the generalization hierarchy tree automatic generation unit based on a user defined hierarchy tree generates a Hu-Tucker coding tree using the user defined hierarchy tree, the frequency obtained by the frequency obtaining unit and order information which is defined in advance as an attribute value of the attribute.

16. The personal information anonymization device according to claim 12,

wherein the generalization hierarchy tree automatic generation unit based on a user defined hierarchy tree checks whether grandchildren of nodes overlap in two or more nodes which do not have a grandparent-and-grandchild relationship among nodes that configure the user defined hierarchy tree.

17. The personal information anonymization device according to claim 12,

wherein the nodes of the user defined hierarchy tree have a label in which labels of all children of the node are listed.

18. The personal information anonymization device according to claim 12,

wherein the user defined hierarchy tree is configured by nodes, having a label of an abstract name in which a node to be a child is not obvious, and nodes, in which a node having a label of the abstract name is a parent.

19. The personal information anonymization device according to claim 12,

wherein the nodes of the user defined hierarchy tree have labels indicating a range of an attribute value which becomes a grandchild of the node and the range does not overlap a range of nodes which do not have a grandparent or grandchild relationship with the node.

10. A personal information anonymization device, comprising:

using one or more personal information formed of attribute values for every attribute and a generalization hierarchy tree that represents a dominant concept of an attribute value which occurs in the one or more personal information for each attribute as a tree structure in accordance with a level of an obfuscation as an input,

a lost information amount metric unit configured to calculate an amount of information lost at the time of obfuscating one attribute value of one personal information using the automatically generated generalization hierarchy tree; and

a unit configured to recode the input personal information by obfuscating each attribute value of the input personal information to a node which is a grandparent of a node indicated by the attribute value using the lost information amount metric unit and the generalization hierarchy tree.

11. A personal information anonymization device, using a generalization hierarchy tree that stores a generalization hierarchy tree that represents a dominant concept of an attribute value for every attribute as a tree structure in accordance with a level of obfuscation, anonymous information in which one or more personal information are anonymized using the generalization hierarchy tree, and a number of personal information in which an attribute value occurs for every attribute value of each attribute as inputs, and

by using a node frequency obtaining unit that in the case of a leaf, counts the occurrence frequencies of nodes of the generalization hierarchy tree as a number of original personal information in which an attribute value indicated by the leaf occurs and in the case of an internal node, counts the occurrence frequencies of nodes of the generalization hierarchy tree as a total frequency of nodes which are grandchildren of an external node and leaves,

outputs a value obtained by replacing each of the attribute values of each attribute of the anonymous information of the inputs with an attribute value of a leaf c with a possibility of a frequency of c/a frequency of a for one or more leaves which are grandchildren of the attribute value when the attribute value is a node a of the generalization hierarchy tree.