European Union regulations on algorithmic decision making and a “right to explanation”

January 31, 2017November 11, 2019 ~ Adrian Colyer ~ 13 Comments

European Union regulations on algorithmic decision-making and a “right to explanation” Goodman & Flaxman, 2016 In just over a year, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) becomes law in European member states. This paper focuses on just one particular aspect of the new law, article 22, as it relates to profiling, non-discrimination, and the right ... Continue Reading

Generic attacks on secure outsourced databases

November 16, 2016November 11, 2019 ~ Adrian Colyer ~ 2 Comments

Generic Attacks on Secure Outsourced Databases Kellaris et al. CCS 2016 Here’s a really interesting paper that helps to set some boundaries around what we can expect from encrypted databases in the cloud. Independently of the details of any one system (or encryption scheme), the authors look at what data it is possible to recover ... Continue Reading

A Bayesian approach to graphical record linkage and de-duplication

October 28, 2016November 11, 2019 ~ Adrian Colyer ~ 3 Comments

A Bayesian approach to graphical record linkage and de-duplication Steorts et al. AISTATS, 2014 I don't normally cover papers from statistics conferences and journals, but this one caught my eye as addressing a high-value problem. Through a different lens, it also shows some of the challenges in maintaining privacy when it is possible to join ... Continue Reading

BlindBox: Deep packet inspection over encrypted traffic

June 21, 2016 ~ Adrian Colyer ~ 1 Comment

BlindBox: Deep packet inspection over encrypted traffic Sherry et al. SIGCOMM 2015 This is the final paper from the inaugural Research for Practice selections, and the third of Justine Sherry's three picks. The fundamental problem addressed is the same as we looked at yesterday: how do you accommodate middleboxes in HTTPS traffic? More specifically, this ... Continue Reading

Scalable and private media consumption with Popcorn

April 1, 2016 ~ Adrian Colyer ~ 1 Comment

Scalable and private media consumption with Popcorn - Gupta et al. 2016 What price can we put on privacy? For streaming media consumption (think Netflix) in which you have complete privacy concerning the media you are watching (i.e., not even the service provider knows - how is this even possible? We'll get to that...), it ... Continue Reading

Sieve: Cryptographically Enforced Access Control for User Data in Untrusted Clouds

March 25, 2016 ~ Adrian Colyer ~ Leave a comment

Sieve: Cryptographically Enforced Access Control for User Data in Untrusted Clouds - Wang et al. 2016 Who owns your data? With cloud services, 'your' data is typically spread across multiple walled gardens, one per service. I'm reminded of a great line from "On the duality of resilience and privacy:" It is a truth universally acknowledged ... Continue Reading

CryptoNets: Applying Neural Networks to Encrypted Data with High Throughput and Accuracy

March 8, 2016 ~ Adrian Colyer ~ 8 Comments

CryptoNets: Applying Neural Networks to Encrypted Data with High Throughput and Accuracy - Downlin et al. 2016 Fixed misspellings of homomorphic ! With the rise of machine learning, it's easy to imagine all sorts of cloud services that can process your data and make predictions of some kind (Machine Learning as a Service - MLAS). ... Continue Reading

Vuvuzela: Scalable Private Messaging Resistant to Traffic Analysis

October 23, 2015 ~ Adrian Colyer ~ Leave a comment

Vuvuzela: Scalable Private Messaging Resistant to Traffic Analysis - van den Hooff, Lazar, et al. 2015 Many users would like their communications over the Internet to be private, and for some, such as reporters, lawyers, or whistleblowers, privacy is of paramount concern... Recently, officials at the NSA have even stated that “if you have enough ... Continue Reading

Bloom Cookies: web search personalization without user tracking

February 25, 2015 ~ Adrian Colyer ~ 1 Comment

Bloom Cookies: Web search personalization without user tracking - Mor et al. 2015 After yesterday's homomorphic encryption-based paper it's a relief to read a privacy paper I can follow from end to end! Online services track us as much as they can get away with, in order to offer personalized services (including the 'service' of ... Continue Reading

the morning paper

a random walk through Computer Science research, by Adrian Colyer
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