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Comment by Scene_Cast2 | Hacker News Reader

Explicitly trying to re-identify data that has been de-identified is typically a fireable offence at FAANG.

Accidentally making a machine learning system that happens to (potentially) do it is a different matter.

Modern corporations have learned that the best way to do shady things is to make it very clear that such things are against policy and absolutely forbidden, and then to also make it very clear that breaking policy is the only way to actually get your job done. That way they still get all the benefits of doing shady stuff, and if it ever comes to light then they can fire some scapegoats and explain that this was against policy and they'd never ever condone it.

this isn't even a "modern corporations" thing, at least in my experience.

i remember ~25 years ago being on-call with a work truck. we were absolutely not allowed to speed, at all, ever. we also absolutely had to be at the customer's site within 45 minutes of being called.

guess how many of my sites were >45 minutes away when traveling the legal speed limit.

I was thinking longer term. It feels like something from recent decades, whereas a century ago the boss would just outright tell you to do the bad thing. That's just my vague impression of the matter. Maybe this sort of thing goes back forever. In any case, excellent example, exactly the sort of thing I mean.

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