Presentation given at Infosecurity Belgium by Kristof Verslype on 23 March 2017.

What if a research team wants to analyse large sets of personal data? Say it needs medical, financial and demographic data of all citizens with a wage of at least EURO 40.000, born after 1990 and who are self-employed as a secondary activity. Data sets managed by different government institutions would need to be linked together. Such requests are common, and any government should be able to answer them. Yet is it possible with due respect for the privacy of citizens in an era of big data? Smals Research examined the boundaries of what is technically possible.