# Professor of the Practice of Government and Technology, Harvard

Source: https://startwithidentity.com/experts/latanya-sweeney/
Last updated: 2026-09-20
License: content by Start with Identity. Cite the source URL.

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## Bio

Latanya Sweeney developed k-anonymity with Pierangela Samarati and demonstrated, in work published in 2000, that 87 percent of the US population could be uniquely identified from ZIP code, date of birth, and sex alone. She re-identified de-identified medical records to prove the point, including those of the then-governor of Massachusetts. She is a professor at Harvard and directs the Data Privacy Lab.

Profile built from public academic and publication records.

## Where their work shows up

Her finding created the concept of a quasi-identifier: attributes that identify nobody alone and identify almost everyone in combination. That is the exact risk in credential presentation. Handing a verifier a birth date and a postcode to prove you are over eighteen discloses far more than the claim being made, which is why [selective disclosure](https://startwithidentity.com/standards/verifiable-credentials/) and predicate proofs exist. See [identity verification vendors](https://startwithidentity.com/vendors/identity-verification/), [what is decentralized identity](https://startwithidentity.com/guides/fundamentals/what-is-decentralized-identity/), and the [regulations hub](https://startwithidentity.com/regulations/).