Techniques which allow the sharing of data whilst keeping it secure

by jinnko on 10/30/2022, 7:18:09 PM with 31 comments

  • by nl on 10/31/2022, 1:14:06 AM

    There are other techniques that aren't generally included in the "Zero Knowledge Proofs" set of techniques that are perhaps more practical for general development.

    For example, I find private set intersection[1] as implemented by OpenMined a really useful primitive a bunch of privacy enhancing applications can be built on top of.

    My colleagues and I recently published a pre-print[2] showing how to use this for sharing locations you and another person have had in common, without being able to see other locations. The paper talks about a social network built around this but I also think there are useful applications in things like real-world games (scavenger hunts etc)

    [1] https://github.com/OpenMined/PSI/blob/master/private_set_int...

    [2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.01927

  • by sjducb on 10/31/2022, 7:55:29 AM

    If you're trying to use brute force to break this system it's important to realise that the search space is not all possible hashes. The search space is all likely names. This makes it trivial to break, especially for the CIA case where there are really only a few hundred likely adversaries.

    The encryption/hashing doesn't really add anything beyond empty marketing. The trusted party who ppl report to could easily work out all of the names of they wanted to.

  • by ericalexander0 on 10/31/2022, 1:29:15 AM

    What's the limiting factor of homomorphic encryption? Is it that it's provable? Is it the compute overhead? Is it too magical for governance?

  • by xhkkffbf on 10/30/2022, 9:16:05 PM

    Privacy enhancing technologies are neat, but they're not exactly new. I've been following them since the 90s. There was a book called _Translucent Databases_ and dozens of good papers back then. Since then, there are entire conferences.

    It's good that the Guardian is covering this, but it's not exactly new.

  • by cortesoft on 10/31/2022, 4:49:28 AM

    > “Maybe one person doesn’t have a case, but two people do.”

    Except they don’t have any way to contact each other, or for anyone else (like the police) to contact them… so how exactly are they going to have a case?

  • by nopenopenopeno on 10/31/2022, 2:20:17 AM

    >they can discover if their abuser is a repeat offender without identifying themselves to the authorities

    Nonsense. An anonymous accusation is all but meaningless, and is in no way similar to a conviction. This is some truly garbage journalism.