Enforcement of data privacy to maintain obfuscation of certain data

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium tangibly embodying a program of machine-readable instructions executable by a digital processing apparatus to perform operations comprising:

• determining whether data to be released from a database maps to at least one confidential mapping between sets of data in the database;
• and
• in response to the data mapping to the at least one confidential mapping, determining whether release of the data meets at least one predetermined anonymity requirement of an anonymity policy, wherein determining whether release of the data meets at least one predetermined anonymity requirement of an anonymity policy further comprises performing static enforcement of the anonymity policy by analyzing program code without executing the program code, wherein the program code performs release of the data at one or more release points when the program code is executed, and wherein determining whether release of the data meets at least one predetermined anonymity requirement of an anonymity policy and performing static enforcement of the anonymity policy further comprises:
• determining the one or more release points in the program code;
• and
• determining, during the static enforcement, whether the release of the data from the one or more release points is in accordance with a k-anonymity requirement specified by the anonymity policy.

An apparatus, comprising:

• at least one processor;
• and
• at least one memory including instructions,
• the at least one processor configured, in response to executing the instructions, to cause the apparatus to perform at least the following:
• determining whether data to be released from a database maps to at least one confidential mapping between sets of data in the database;
• and
• in response to the data mapping to the at least one confidential mapping, determining whether release of the data meets at least one predetermined anonymity requirement of an anonymity policy, wherein determining whether release of the data meets at least one predetermined anonymity requirement of an anonymity policy further comprises performing static enforcement of the anonymity policy by analyzing program code without executing the program code, wherein the program code performs release of the data at one or more release points when the program code is executed, and wherein determining whether release of the data meets at least one predetermined anonymity requirement of an anonymity policy and performing static enforcement of the anonymity policy further comprises:
• determining, during the static enforcement, whether an invocation of an obfuscation function is performed in the program code on at least one path from a query to at least one of the one or more release points at which the data would be released by the program code when the program code is executed;
• and
• in response to the invocation of an obfuscation function not being performed in the program code on the at least one path from the query to the at least one release point at which the data would be released by the program code, performing during the static enforcement at least one action.