[discoursism]

> How do you automate personal data discovery, especially for already existing data?

You attach an owner id to every record, and make sure all your systems can dump all information they store according to owner id. To the extent existing systems don't, you fix them.

[Radim]

Charming response :-) Entire industry dismissed in a single HN comment. Poof!

I'm not sure we understand "data discovery" to mean the same thing, but you reminded me of "How To Draw An Owl":

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/01/how-to-draw-...

[discoursism]

Hrm, did you expect me to design the output of an entire industry in an HN comment? I didn't say it was easy to do. But it is what must be done. My goal was not to provide code, but an outline, a very rough sketch, rough to the extent that it could fit in a pair of sentences. I guess in that sense the owl metaphor is accurate!

We've had two years to work on this. At my company, we've had entire teams spending significant fractions of their time over the last year prepping. As a result, we'll be ready when the switch flips.