Exploring Design and Governance Challenges in the Development of Privacy-Preserving Computation [article]

Nitin Agrawal, Reuben Binns, Max Van Kleek, Kim Laine, Nigel Shadbolt
2021 pre-print
Homomorphic encryption, secure multi-party computation, and differential privacy are part of an emerging class of Privacy Enhancing Technologies which share a common promise: to preserve privacy whilst also obtaining the benefits of computational analysis. Due to their relative novelty, complexity, and opacity, these technologies provoke a variety of novel questions for design and governance. We interviewed researchers, developers, industry leaders, policymakers, and designers involved in their
more » ... deployment to explore motivations, expectations, perceived opportunities and barriers to adoption. This provided insight into several pertinent challenges facing the adoption of these technologies, including: how they might make a nebulous concept like privacy computationally tractable; how to make them more usable by developers; and how they could be explained and made accountable to stakeholders and wider society. We conclude with implications for the development, deployment, and responsible governance of these privacy-preserving computation techniques.
doi:10.1145/3411764.3445677 arXiv:2101.08048v1 fatcat:kggifqe6drdxngsry46o6kmwgy