Preserving privacy in natural language databases

1. A method comprising:

selecting a transcription of a spoken natural language input from a speaker, the transcription comprising sensitive information and non-sensitive information;

sanitizing the sensitive information, to form a clean transcription of the spoken natural language input, the clean transcription having sanitized text and non-sanitized text; and

anonymizing the non-sanitized text in the clean transcription by modifying a feature vector associated with the non-sanitized text, to yield a modified feature vector, such that the modified feature vector is associated with a mean feature vector of different speakers.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein sanitizing the sensitive information further comprises:

finding a named entity in the spoken natural language input; and

performing, on the named entity, one of value distortion, value disassociation, and value class membership to preserve privacy in a spoken natural language database.

3. The method claim 2 , wherein sanitizing the sensitive information further comprises:

performing, on the named entity, two of value distortion, value disassociation, and value class membership to preserve privacy in the spoken natural language database.

4. The method of claim 2 , further comprising performing value class membership by replacing a value with a generic token.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein performing value class membership further comprises:

placing an indication of one of a gender and other information in the generic token when the value represents an identification of a person.

6. The method of claim 2 , wherein finding the named entity further comprises using an automated approach to detect a name.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein anonymizing further comprises replacing a word in the non-sanitized text with a corresponding synonym.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein sanitizing the sensitive information further comprises changing a distribution of utterances and semantically labeled data in the non-sanitized text.

9. A system comprising:

a processor; and

a computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored which, when executed by the processor, result in the processor performing operations comprising:

selecting a transcription of a spoken natural language input from a speaker, the transcription comprising sensitive information and non-sensitive information;

sanitizing the sensitive information, to form a clean transcription of the spoken natural language input, the clean transcription having sanitized text and non-sanitized text; and

anonymizing the non-sanitized text in the clean transcription by modifying a feature vector associated with the non-sanitized text, to yield a modified feature vector, such that the modified feature vector is associated with a mean feature vector of different speakers.

10. The system of claim 9 , wherein sanitizing the sensitive information further comprises:

finding a named entity in the spoken natural language input; and

performing, on the named entity, one of value distortion, value disassociation, and value class membership to preserve privacy in a spoken natural language database.

11. The system of claim 10 , wherein sanitizing the sensitive information further comprises:

performing, on the named entity, two of value distortion, value disassociation, and value class membership to preserve privacy in the spoken natural language database.

12. The system of claim 10 , the computer-readable storage medium having additional instructions stored which result in the operations further comprising performing value class membership by replacing a value with a generic token.

13. The system of claim 12 , wherein performing value class membership further comprises:

placing an indication of one of a gender and other information in the generic token when the value represents an identification of a person.

14. The system of claim 10 , wherein finding the named entity further comprises using an automated approach to detect a name.

15. The system of claim 9 , wherein anonymizing further comprises replacing a word in the non-sanitized text with a corresponding synonym.

16. The system of claim 9 , wherein sanitizing the sensitive information further comprises changing a distribution of utterances and semantically labeled data in the non-sanitized text.

17. A computer-readable storage device having instructions stored which, when executed by a computing device, result in the computing device performing operations comprising:

selecting a transcription of a spoken natural language input from a speaker, the transcription comprising sensitive information and non-sensitive information;

sanitizing the sensitive information, to form a clean transcription of the spoken natural language input, the clean transcription having sanitized text and non-sanitized text; and

anonymizing the non-sanitized text in the clean transcription by modifying a feature vector associated with the non-sanitized text, to yield a modified feature vector, such that the modified feature vector is associated with a mean feature vector of different speakers.

18. The computer-readable storage device of claim 17 , wherein sanitizing the sensitive information further comprises:

finding a named entity in the spoken natural language input; and

performing, on the named entity, one of value distortion, value disassociation, and value class membership to preserve privacy in a spoken natural language database.

19. The computer-readable storage device of claim 18 , wherein sanitizing the sensitive information further comprises:

performing, on the named entity, two of value distortion, value disassociation, and value class membership to preserve privacy in the spoken natural language database.

20. The computer-readable storage device of claim 19 , the computer-readable storage device having additional instructions stored which result in the operations further comprising performing value class membership by replacing a value with a generic token.