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A soft boundary between data and code raises interesting legal and political implications once viable homomorphic encryption rolls out. We talk of "data centre

A soft boundary between data and code raises interesting legal and political implications once viable homomorphic encryption rolls out. We talk of "data centres" as if they were warehouses and distribution depots for good. And we talk of "cloud computing" as if it were an online sausage factory where things get sent to be "processed". This is the paradigm into which our current trust models are fitted. Along with it comes the idea of moving or limiting PII across jurisdictional borders. But it's not the only paradigm. If (a BIG if) we could actually have endpoint security for the user/owner, trusted platform technology might one day work in a fashion rather favourable to privacy and science (benevolent technological society and digital governance). You send me the computation (as ostensible data) that you want to operate on my (secret) "data" (as ostensible code/function) which I apply and return results. You never see the data. If there's a way you cannot even in principle discover the data by reverse engineering or probing then it could enable the good uses of big data (voting and population scale medical research) to be achieved while eliminating the evils of surveillance capitalism and targeted advertising. Any thoughts as to the theoretical feasability of this? (I'm not interested in "big thugs will never let that happen" or "nobody gives a fig, privacy is dead anyway" whines)

klez 4y ago
> You send me the computation (as ostensible data) that you want to operate on my (secret) "data" (as ostensible code/function) which I apply and return results. Isn't that basically what we do with web applications? The server sends me JavaScript code which I run on my machine with my data (which the server doesn't need to see) and send the result to the server (either for further computation or for storage). I mean, in it's current form it's not a perfect separation. It's more of a hybrid model where computation happens both on the client and the server, and some data is actually sent to the server without client-side computation. But the basic model is there.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > Isn't that basically what we do with web applications? ... It's more of a hybrid model where computation happens both on the client Yes I think that's a valid observation, the essential paradigm, but you nail it (the limitations) as "hybrid". You're sending potentially untrustworthy (tamperable of obfuscated) code in the clear, and I have to trust your code and execute it. Flipping the data-code it's my code that runs on your data. Without sequencing the crypto primitives clearly yet, it feels like with a set of homomorphic operations we can get a "zero knowledge result" - you don't get to see my data and I don't get to see your "ask", and nobody in the middle gets to see anything - yet useful, mutually beneficial computation is obtained. Seems a Haskell/LISP-like paradigm using remotely evaluated first-class functions/monads would be the ecosystem within which to start experimenting with such ideas.
082349872349872 4y ago
cf "KeyKOS factory"
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  KeyKOS: "mechanism for secure sharing of programs among mutually suspicious users" Interesting, Thankyou.
defrost 4y ago
>> Any thoughts as to the theoretical feasability of this? and if I request an identify function as the computation of interest? The use case I'm most familiar with is petabyte storage of raw satellite feeds (along with digitised air photos, multi spectral data, etc) and a requested computation that georeferences and mosaics raw data and combines and enhances spectral bands in various ROIs for specific purposes. It's a pipelined functional programmin data transformation .. with no specific reason to keep the raw imputs secret, the intent is to make them useful via transform.
tsimionescu 4y ago
> once viable homomorphic encryption rolls out It should be noted that there is currently no reason to beleive homomorphic encryption will ever be fast enough to be applicable for anything except niche problems that require the utmost secrecy for tiny amounts of computation. It would be great if some improvement is found that would speed it up, but there is no reason to beleive such an improvement must exist.

klez 4y ago

> You send me the computation (as ostensible data) that you want to operate on my (secret) "data" (as ostensible code/function) which I apply and return results. Isn't that basically what we do with web applications? The server sends me JavaScript code which I run on my machine with my data (which the server doesn't need to see) and send the result to the server (either for further computation or for storage). I mean, in it's current form it's not a perfect separation. It's more of a hybrid model where computation happens both on the client and the server, and some data is actually sent to the server without client-side computation. But the basic model is there.

nonrandomstring 4y ago
> Isn't that basically what we do with web applications? ... It's more of a hybrid model where computation happens both on the client Yes I think that's a valid observation, the essential paradigm, but you nail it (the limitations) as "hybrid". You're sending potentially untrustworthy (tamperable of obfuscated) code in the clear, and I have to trust your code and execute it. Flipping the data-code it's my code that runs on your data. Without sequencing the crypto primitives clearly yet, it feels like with a set of homomorphic operations we can get a "zero knowledge result" - you don't get to see my data and I don't get to see your "ask", and nobody in the middle gets to see anything - yet useful, mutually beneficial computation is obtained. Seems a Haskell/LISP-like paradigm using remotely evaluated first-class functions/monads would be the ecosystem within which to start experimenting with such ideas.

082349872349872 4y ago

cf "KeyKOS factory"

nonrandomstring 4y ago
KeyKOS: "mechanism for secure sharing of programs among mutually suspicious users" Interesting, Thankyou.

defrost 4y ago

>> Any thoughts as to the theoretical feasability of this? and if I request an identify function as the computation of interest? The use case I'm most familiar with is petabyte storage of raw satellite feeds (along with digitised air photos, multi spectral data, etc) and a requested computation that georeferences and mosaics raw data and combines and enhances spectral bands in various ROIs for specific purposes. It's a pipelined functional programmin data transformation .. with no specific reason to keep the raw imputs secret, the intent is to make them useful via transform.

tsimionescu 4y ago

> once viable homomorphic encryption rolls out It should be noted that there is currently no reason to beleive homomorphic encryption will ever be fast enough to be applicable for anything except niche problems that require the utmost secrecy for tiny amounts of computation. It would be great if some improvement is found that would speed it up, but there is no reason to beleive such an improvement must exist.