Dear all,
I started using WikiData for Private Information Retrieval. This allows
answering certain questions while maintaining a high degree of secrecy.
Suppose you wanted to know when Einstein was born, but for some reason you
must keep the fact that you want to know this a secret. In this case, we
assume a threat model with perfect knowledge about the computer in use, not
just that someone managed to log the Wikidata requests.
One solution would be to request a table of every human who ever won the
Nobel Prize (this requires the common knowledge of Einstein being a winner
of said) with the kind of Nobel Prize, date awarded, date of birth, date of
death unless living, nationality etc. If we let this table scroll across
the screen and read the required entry, there would be - as far as I can
tell - no way to learn which entry (and how many of them) is of our
interest.
I have written a simple PHP script that allows one to enter a SPARQL
request and have it displayed as a scrolling table. Please be advised that
this is in a very informal alpha state, and I am no professional Web
Developer. It's a mere proof-of-concept, but feel free to try it out if the
API quota lets you.
https://darius-runge.eu/otp/request.php
My question is, whether anyone of you might be interested in working with
me on discussing practical implications of this method (how should requests
be written to allow for the desired privacy?) or even making a better
implementation of a tool that allows viewing the scrolling table of
printing it out.
Feel free to reply to this mailing list entry or contact me privately with
the postal or telecommunication data provided in the footer in case you
don't want to discuss it in public.
Best,
Darius
----------------------------------------
Darius Runge
Postfach 3
72669 Unterensingen
Germany
Tel +49 7022 5064970
Fax +49 7022 5064971
Vox +49 7022 5064998 (2 min)
All up-to-date contact data:
https://darius-runge.eu