Big Data and Differential Privacy

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Our society is in the midst of a great revolution due to Big Data. This revolution affects every aspect of our lives from online to offline, from business to science. Privacy today is both a major social concern and an intellectually challenging problem; the problem is exacerbated by the Big Data trend. Differential privacy is a principled approach to achieving the goal of privacy which, conceived as it was in the context of large databases, is especially suited for Big Data. This workshop will bring together researchers on differential privacy with the world's leading Big Data theoreticians to congregate at the Simons Institute in the Fall of 2013 to create a rare opportunity for true breakthroughs both in Privacy and in Big Data. The Simons Institute will be hosting a special semester on "Theoretical foundations of Big Data analysis" during Fall of 2013, which will bring together several experts in analysis of big data. The purpose of the workshop will be on the one hand to develop new differential-privacy-inspired techniques for allowing large-scale data analysis without threatening the privacy of individuals, and on the other hand for the two communities to explore together the statistical concepts and techniques which are at the basis of both. The four-day workshop on "Big Data and Differential Privacy" will take place December 11-14, 2013 at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, located in Berkeley, CA.