Differential privacy tools from MS Research and Harvard

Post by Sephr » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 3:21 PM UTC

frankmcsherry wrote: post #8

Sephr wrote: post #2

From https://github.com/opendifferentialprivacy/whitenoise-core : "Differential privacy is the gold standard definition of privacy protection." Differential privacy is nice, but it's still tracking and "less tracking" is absolutely not the gold standard definition of privacy protection. That title goes to "no tracking"

> That title goes to "no tracking" This is roughly analogous to "abstinence is the best form of birth control". It's not wrong, but it also isn't particularly realistic or helpful. The reality is that people often do want to exchange data, some times because it is legally or morally mandated, and tools that allow this to be done as safely as possible are important. If you have free cycles, you can read more here: htt…

Post by kohtatsu » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #6

kohtatsu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me what data you've collected and would like to share, including metadata, and if you ask nicely then most of the time I'd be more than happy to share it. Things like emoji usage, page navigations, feature uses, etc. Ideally anonymous; no IP, user agent, etc, just a small byte or two packed properly can go a long way.

>Ideally anonymous The problem is that it's actually quite hard to reliably anonymize data especially once you start to begin combining data sets from multiple places. That's the problem differential privacy is trying to solve in a mathematically rigorous way. See for example how researchers partially de-anonymized Netflix Prize data by cross-referencing it with IMDB reviews.

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Post by casedup » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

Post by im3w1l-alt » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 8:43 PM UTC

frankmcsherry wrote: post #8

Sephr wrote: post #2

From https://github.com/opendifferentialprivacy/whitenoise-core : "Differential privacy is the gold standard definition of privacy protection." Differential privacy is nice, but it's still tracking and "less tracking" is absolutely not the gold standard definition of privacy protection. That title goes to "no tracking"

> That title goes to "no tracking" This is roughly analogous to "abstinence is the best form of birth control". It's not wrong, but it also isn't particularly realistic or helpful. The reality is that people often do want to exchange data, some times because it is legally or morally mandated, and tools that allow this to be done as safely as possible are important. If you have free cycles, you can read more here: htt…

Post by im3w1l » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

mjohn wrote: post #3

Sephr wrote: post #2

From https://github.com/opendifferentialprivacy/whitenoise-core : "Differential privacy is the gold standard definition of privacy protection." Differential privacy is nice, but it's still tracking and "less tracking" is absolutely not the gold standard definition of privacy protection. That title goes to "no tracking"

Privacy is not just relevant to advertising. There are a huge number of research opportunities in the social sciences that could benefit and can help make the world better.