CAREER:Information Theoretic Methods for Private Information Retrieval and Search in Distributed Storage Systems

最近的数据革命正在推动现代社会和经济进步的许多方面。这些海量数据中的大部分现在存储在云中，以便希望共享信息（包括照片、视频、出版物、观点和科学数据）的无数用户能够轻松访问。不幸的是，这是以牺牲用户的隐私为代价的，用户的在线活动可被用来对其进行侧写，使大部分人口容易成为歧视和可能迫害的目标。 本研究的目的是通过关注分布式存储系统（DSS）中的私有信息检索（PIR）和搜索问题来解决云中数据的隐私挑战。PIR方案使用户能够查询数据，而不会泄露有关查询的信息，从而不会泄露他们的个人偏好、倾向、健康状况或其他特征。经典的信息论PIR方案需要数据被复制，鉴于数据的指数增长，这不是一个可扩展的解决方案。本研究的目的是建立一个统一的框架，研究编码方案，除了提供数据的可靠性，迎合私人查询的需要。建议的研究重点是：（i）明确的代码和PIR计划，解决实际和重要的方面，分布式存储，如存储成本，网络通信成本，磁盘读取，延迟和计算的结构;（ii）明确的代码和计划的私有关键字搜索的结构; ㈢确定可靠性、保密性和不同系统管理费用之间的基本限制和权衡;（iv）在真实的基因组和社会科学数据上测试方案的软件实现。该项目还结合了几个教育和推广工作，包括开发新的可公开访问的在线内容，内容涉及分布式存储系统中的信息理论、安全和隐私，以及通过PI机构的全球领导者计划进行的大学预科推广。

The recent data revolution is driving many aspects of modern societal and economic progress. Most of this massive data is now stored in the cloud to enable easy access for a myriad of users who wish to share information including, for example, photos, videos, publications, opinions, and scientific data. Unfortunately, this has come at the expense of the user's privacy whose online activity can be used to profile him/her, making large parts of the population an easy target for discrimination and possible persecution. This research aims at addressing the privacy challenge of data in the cloud by focusing on the problem of Private Information Retrieval (PIR) and Search in distributed storage systems (DSSs). PIR schemes enable users to query data without revealing information about the queries and hence their personal preferences, tendencies, health, or other traits.Classical information theoretic PIR schemes require data to be replicated, which is not a scalable solution given the exponential growth of data. This research aims at creating a unified framework for studying coding schemes that, in addition to providing data reliability, cater to the need of private queries. The focus of the proposed research is on (i) explicit constructions of codes and PIR schemes that address practical and important aspects of distributed storage, such as storage cost, network communication cost, disk reads, latency and computations; (ii) explicit constructions of codes and schemes for private keyword search; (iii) characterization of the fundamental limits and tradeoffs between reliability, privacy and the different system overheads; (iv) testing software implementations of the schemes on real genomic and social science data. The project also incorporates several educational and outreach efforts, including the development of new publicly accessible online content on information theory, security, and privacy in distributed storage systems as well as pre-college outreach through the Global Leaders Program at the PI's institution.