Re: [tlug] Search MySQL for Japanese Names]

[Edward Middleton <emiddleton@example.com>]

黒鉄章 wrote:
> Jim Breen wrote:
>> ... When I was at Tokyo Gaidai they had access to a full copy of the NTT directory. It would have been nice to do some frequency measures on names, and geographical dispersions on family names, but there was an embargo on any publications drawing on the data. They said it was because of "privacy".
>>     
>
> Well, in the case of rare names some privacy can be broken through
> practical assumptions. I once read that the US census doesn't open the
> stats on baby names that occur less than, say, a 100 times a year.
>   

I believe current privacy law requires you to specify what the private
information will be used for before it is collected,  so if NTT hadn't
said they would use it to generate statistics they could get in trouble.

Edward