Building the Anti-Big Brother Databases

Presented at HOPE Number Six (2006), July 21, 2006, 1 p.m. (60 minutes).

Databases don't need to be huge collections of personal information waiting to be exploited. This talk will show how a few simple encryption functions can build a database that answers questions for the legitimate users but locks out all illegitimate users including those with the root password. The techniques make it possible to build privacy-preserving systems with much less complexity and overhead than conventional techniques.


Presenters:

  • Peter Wayner
    Peter Wayner is the author of Translucent Databases, a book that explores how to build databases that do useful work without having useful information in them. He writes frequently for many publications and consults on database design and other security questions.

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