At some point in your life you've probably been asked to take out a #2 pencil and fill in a series of numbered ovals. This method for gathering standardized data is widely used in elections, tests, and surveys, and it's generally considered to be anonymous: if you don't put your name at the top, you don't expect your answers can be traced back to you.
New research from Princeton University calls that assumption into question. A team led by computer science professor (and current Chief Technologist of the Federal Trade Commission) Ed Felten has demonstrated software techniques for re-identification of respondents using only images of their filled-in bubbles. Their technology has both benign uses—detecting cheating in standardized tests—and malicious ones like undermining the secret ballot.
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