The Top Data Detective Award

The Top Data Detective Award honors individuals whose work exposes privacy vulnerabilities—making hidden risks visible and actionable for the public, policymakers, and practitioners. Sponsored by Patient Privacy Rights, the award is selected through Harvard University's Data Privacy Lab, now part of the Techizen Institute.

The award celebrates the investigative spirit exemplified by Dr. Latanya Sweeney's early research on re-identification risk. By uncovering privacy weaknesses in widely available datasets and common sharing practices—and documenting the evidence—she equipped regulators, journalists, and other stakeholders to pursue meaningful reforms. Without such vulnerabilities being publicly exposed, individuals could be harmed and suffer the adverse consequences of the harm without ever knowing why or how. The Top Data Detective Award carries this tradition forward by recognizing those who bring privacy risks to light and, in doing so, strengthen protections for everyone.

Recipients

• Chris Vickery
• Ji Su Yoo

2017 Top Data Detective Award Recipient

Ji Su Yoo

Ji Su Yoo, a researcher at Harvard's Data Privacy Lab, has led several highly publicized studies in the Journal of Technology Science that expose vulnerabilities in datasets and data-sharing practices. She has also mentored hundreds of students, teaching them how to identify and document privacy risks with rigor and care. Her work on reidentification risk in publicly shared data about individuals has been instrumental in expanding PPR's theDataMap project—contributing the largest number of verified new nodes to date to help track hidden flows of personal health data in the United States. An inspiring leader, she is committed to ensuring technology helps reduce—rather than reinforce—political and societal inequalities. (See also theDataMap and the Journal of Technolology Science.)

2016 Top Data Detective Award Recipient

Chris Vickery

Chris Vickery has been recognized as a security expert by major outlets including Forbes, BBC News, The New York Times, WIRED, and NBC News, among many others. He has worked with Microsoft, Visa, Citrix, RealNetworks, Major League Baseball, Verizon, and dozens of additional organizations to identify and help close serious data-exposure vulnerabilities. He is widely known for uncovering an exposed database containing over 191 million U.S. voter registration records, and he estimates that his disclosures have helped remediate breaches affecting tens of millions of people—beyond voter datasets in the United States and Mexico. His findings also catalyzed significant reforms to open data portals and how sensitive information is handled in public-facing systems.