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Can I not train a text classifier on encrypted text? Basically, let the AI figure out what ads get clicked the most for a given string of encrypted 24h window

by leobg 4y ago

Can I not train a text classifier on encrypted text? Basically, let the AI figure out what ads get clicked the most for a given string of encrypted 24h window of chat history. Eventually, the AI is going to hit on its “Rosetta Stone”, even without ever formally decrypting the text, much less any human reading it. With millions of conversations happening on WhatsApp, why shouldn’t that be possible? And it’s not even a breach, technically, because nothing ever got decrypted, and the similarity vector generated by the AI have, per se, nothing to do with the content of the conversation or the individual that sent them. Run the same training algorithm again and they’d look completely different! Hence they can’t possibly be “personal data” in the sense of the law.

MAGZine 4y ago
No. Encryption means the data is scrambled. Essentially unrecognizable from noise, save perhaps for some headers. If you can discern meaning from noise, then your theory would work. But discerning meaning from random noise is obviously impossible (i.e. what if there is no meaning?). If you leak information than you say, then the encryption is worthless. Harmful, even, because you think you have protection when you do not.
cumshitpiss 4y ago
mminer237 4y ago
It doesn't matter how many conversations are going. With private key encryption, what a phrase encrypts to for one person would be different than the next. It would have to be trained solely on your conversation. Encryption is also dependent on all the text before it as well as text in the same block, so it would have to be the beginning of the message with no metadata to throw off alignment saying the 16-byte phrase so many times that it could pick up a difference. I'm pretty confident it's impossible to get anything useful out of that.
roywiggins 4y ago
If any algorithm can get even one bit of data about the plaintext then the encryption is broken by definition.

by leobg 4y ago

MAGZine 4y ago

No. Encryption means the data is scrambled. Essentially unrecognizable from noise, save perhaps for some headers. If you can discern meaning from noise, then your theory would work. But discerning meaning from random noise is obviously impossible (i.e. what if there is no meaning?). If you leak information than you say, then the encryption is worthless. Harmful, even, because you think you have protection when you do not.

cumshitpiss 4y ago

mminer237 4y ago

It doesn't matter how many conversations are going. With private key encryption, what a phrase encrypts to for one person would be different than the next. It would have to be trained solely on your conversation. Encryption is also dependent on all the text before it as well as text in the same block, so it would have to be the beginning of the message with no metadata to throw off alignment saying the 16-byte phrase so many times that it could pick up a difference. I'm pretty confident it's impossible to get anything useful out of that.

roywiggins 4y ago

If any algorithm can get even one bit of data about the plaintext then the encryption is broken by definition.