Subject: [Pearg] Privacy preserving data collection

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2018 16:08:37 -0700

Here's the technique I was referring to at today's meeting about Google's
new technique:

https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub46411

I don't know what Google's plans are, but the paper compares Prochlo
favorably to RAPPOR
"

We introduce the Encode, Shuffle, Analyze (ESA) archi- tecture for
privacy-preserving software monitoring, and its PROCHLO implementation.1 The
ESA architecture is in- formed by our experience building, operating, and
maintain- ing the RAPPOR privacy-preserving monitoring system for the
Chrome Web browser [28]. Over the last 3 years, RAP- POR has processed up
to billions of daily, randomized re- ports in a manner that guarantees
local differential privacy, without assumptions about users’ trust; similar
techniques have since gained increased attention [6, 7, 70, 74]. However,
these techniques have limited utility, both in theory and in our
experience, and their statistical nature makes them ill- suited to standard
software engineering practice."

-Ekr