[HN Gopher] Facebook is reportedly trying to analyze encrypted d...
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       Facebook is reportedly trying to analyze encrypted data without
       deciphering it
        
       Author : alexrustic
       Score  : 14 points
       Date   : 2021-08-03 20:34 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.engadget.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.engadget.com)
        
       | kop316 wrote:
       | I'm not sure who wrote this, but....ohhh boy:
       | 
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption
       | 
       | I'm not sure how the author jumped to the conclusions they did,
       | but they show a severe misunderstanding of the applications of
       | homomorphic encryption
        
         | verdverm wrote:
         | There is a TF package for learning on encrypted data. Not
         | familiar with the details or encryption algos supported.
         | 
         | https://github.com/tf-encrypted/tf-encrypted
         | 
         | Homomorphic means the algebra is the same on both sides of the
         | encryption, so this would be one of the types of encryption
         | where this is possible.
        
       | makecheck wrote:
       | Given that algorithms are designed to avalanche (e.g. changing
       | one bit of the plain text causes tons of bits to change in the
       | ciphertext), I don't see what they expect to find from the
       | encrypted data itself. Two similar encrypted sets of data would
       | be similar essentially by accident.
       | 
       | They would have to get information from other observations, e.g.
       | the fact that you send (encrypted but nonetheless observable)
       | messages to certain people at certain times and frequencies,
       | telling them something about the apparent importance of that
       | relationship.
        
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       (page generated 2021-08-03 23:02 UTC)