Abstract:
The talk discusses cryptographic approaches to partially resolving the
tension between privacy and surveillance. We use this question as
motivation to survey recent developments in cryptography. In
particular, we will discuss recent approaches to oblivious transfer
using pairings that are particularly well suited for restricting access
to phone call records. We treat the problem as a system involving three
parties: (i) the phone carriers who provide data, (ii) a judge who
decides when to permit data access, and (iii) an investigator who needs
access to the data. We show how to ensure that data is accessed only
under appropriate judicial review, while minimizing trust in the
different components in the system. Moreover, the system is
transparent and its correctness can be verified by any observer. This
is joint work with Joshua Kroll, Joe Zimmerman, David Wu, Valeria
Nicolaenko, and Ed Felten.