Re: [projectvrm] Differential privacy

[Guy Higgins < >]

+1

Being a structural engineer, I really can’t comment from an IT perspective, but it seems to me that, given enough computer power, anything that is processed via an algorithm can be reversed processed — unless the processing destroys the original data — an example:  A modern radar system collects Inphase and Quadrature (I&Q) data.  That’s the raw data.  The radar system can process that data into a high resolution image (nearly photographic) using synthetic aperture processing techniques.  That image, in pixels, can be transmitted via some RF link and displayed remotely (this is what NASA does all the time with radar imaging of objects in the solar system).  That digital image cannot be reverse processed to resurrect the original I&Q data.  

If Apple is doing something that is original-data-destructively akin to that, I think I feel pretty good about it, but I’m not sure what the injection of noise into the data does.  

Guy

From: Brian Behlendorf < "> >
Date: Wednesday, June 15, 2016 at 6:39
To: Doc Searls < "> >, ProjectVRM list < "> >
Subject: Re: [projectvrm] Differential privacy

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 < "> > wrote:

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

Thoughts?

Doc

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