Cryptographic Tools for Advancing Civil Liberties and Human Rights in the Digital Age

互联网是一个危险的地方。随着我们在网上进行的日常活动的比例不断增加，我们面临的在线隐私威胁也在增加，这些威胁来自欺诈者和身份窃贼、肆无忌惮的营销人员、压迫性的政府以及无数未知和不可知的其他人。这对隐私的影响是巨大的：最近的头条新闻主要是大规模数据泄露的新闻，美国国家安全局（NSA）和其他“五眼”（Five Eyes）情报机构的拉网式监控被曝光，以及最近对有精确目标的虚假信息运动的调查和猜测，其中敌对的外国势力将我们公民的个人信息武器化，以操纵和挑拨我们的民主进程。提出的研究计划侧重于应用密码学和计算机系统安全之间的交叉。它利用密码学的思想来构建安全的系统和工具，使用户能够控制关于自己的信息的收集、传播和使用；他们的信仰、兴趣和从属关系；以及他们的日常活动。这包括从低级加密原语及其数学基础一直到设计、实现和部署由这些原语构建的成熟系统——隐私增强技术（pet）的研究。该项目的长期目标是生成概念框架、加密工具和具体系统，以帮助实现互联网作为“伟大的民主化和均衡器”的早期愿景。为此，我的团队将设计和部署创新的增强隐私的加密原语和pet，不仅有助于保护甚至推进其用户的隐私权，还有助于保护全球人民的基本权利。作为实现上述总体目标的三个短期目标，本提案确定了新的加密原语和协议的发展，用于(i)隐藏互联网通信的内容和元数据，（ii）隐藏存储在数字媒体上的敏感数据的存在，以及（iii）以限制审查者压制它的能力的方式传播信息，或者至少，迫使这种压制透明地发生。无论从教育和推广的角度来看，还是从工业和社会的角度来看，这个项目在任何方面取得的积极成果都将产生积极的影响，远远超出它所寻求的科学进步。具体来说，理论部分将推进密码学和pet的科学知识状态，而实践部分将有助于缓解由已部署和新兴技术引起的重要社会问题，从而为加拿大和世界各地的互联网用户和人权活动家提供具体的利益。

The Internet is a dangerous place. As the proportion of our day-to-day activities that occur online continues to grow, so too does our exposure to online privacy threats imposed by fraudsters and identity thieves, by unscrupulous marketers, by oppressive governments, and by countless unknown and unknowable others. The implications for privacy are huge: recent headlines have been dominated by news of massive data breaches, by revelations of dragnet surveillance by the NSA and other "Five Eyes" intelligence agencies, and, most recently, by investigations and speculation around precision-targeted disinformation campaigns wherein hostile foreign powers weaponize the personal information of our citizenry to manipulate and sow discord in our democratic processes. The proposed research program focuses on the intersection between applied cryptography and computer systems security. It leverages ideas from cryptography to build secure systems and tools that empower users with control over the collection, dissemination, and use of information about themselves; their beliefs, interests, and affiliations; and their day-to-day activities. This includes research all the way from low-level cryptographic primitives and their mathematical underpinnings through to the design, implementation, and deployment of the full-fledged systems-the privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs)-built from those primitives. The long-term goal of the program is to generate conceptual frameworks, cryptographic tools, and concrete systems to aid in realizing the early vision of the Internet as a "great democratizer and equalizer". To this end, my team will design and work to deploy innovative privacy-enhancing cryptographic primitives and PETs that help to protect-or even advance-not only the privacy rights of their users but also the fundamental rights of people across the globe. As three shorter-term objectives towards the above overarching goal, this proposal identifies the development of new cryptographic primitives and protocols for (i) concealing both the content and metadata of Internet communications, (ii) hiding the very existence of sensitive data stored on digital media, and (iii) disseminating information in ways that either limit censors' abilities to suppress it or, at the very least, forces such suppression to happen transparently. Positive results in any aspect of this program will have positive impacts far beyond the scientific advances it seeks to contribute both from an educational and outreach standpoint and from an industrial and societal standpoint. Specifically, the theoretical component will advance the state of scientific knowledge regarding cryptography and PETs, while the practical component will help alleviate important societal problems arising from both deployed and up-and-coming technologies and thereby provide concrete benefits to Internet users and human rights activists in Canada and around the world.