Re: [projectvrm] Differential privacy

[Adrian Gropper < >]

I agree with Brian that this is encouraging and very complicated. Who will audit this kind of software for back doors? I also agree that anything that makes it harder for individuals to understand the use and value of data they are sharing is not good.

Longer-term, Apple and other platform competitors have a major challenge to support diversity at the individual level. As the sophistication of the technology I purchase from any single platform vendor explodes, (Apple already includes: secure elements, biometrics, mesh-enabled radios,etc... across multiple devices (how do I backup my private keys?)) both security and privacy will drive us away from a monoculture at the software and maybe even the hardware level.

I want my platform to have machine learning capability separate from the vendor. I expect the vendor to promote diversity through appropriate use of standards that promote substitutability and innovation. Differential privacy can feed one vendor or a thousand user communities. I'm curious to see if Apple is willing to open up its differential privacy technology both from an audit and a community-based machine learning perspective.

Adrian

On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 8:39 AM, Brian Behlendorf < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

Very encouraging to see, especially symbolically. Whether it actually improves privacy is hard to predict, as we don't know what de-anonymization is possible when this is done at scale, only because no one has tried this at scale before, and we've never seen someone so highly motivated to defeat it as an NSA chasing a terrorist might be, or an ad network trying to retarget you.

One other issue is that we really have no way to audit this, as the implementation and what specifically is shared likely won't be available for inspection by end users. It might also complicate efforts to educate users about what data they are sharing, and get their active consent for it, when there exists this grey area state between sharing and not sharing.

Brian

On June 15, 2016 7:06:03 AM CDT, Doc Searls < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

A new concept from Apple: http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/14/differential-privacy/

Thoughts?

Doc

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Adrian Gropper MD

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