Foundations and Trends R in
Theoretical Computer ScienceVol. 9, Nos. 3–4 (2014) 211–407
c 2014 C. Dwork and A. Roth
DOI: 10.1561/0400000042

The Algorithmic Foundationsof Differential Privacy
Cynthia Dwork
Microsoft Research, USA
dwork@microsoft.com

Aaron Roth
University of Pennsylvania, USAaaroth@cis.upenn.edu

Contents

Preface3

1 The Promise of Differential Privacy
1.1 Privacy-preserving data analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2 Bibliographic notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

56102 Basic Terms
2.1 The model of computation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.2 Towards defining private data analysis . . . . . . . . . . .
2.3 Formalizing differential privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.4 Bibliographic notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11
11
12
15
26

3 Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems
3.1 Useful probabilistic tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2 Randomized response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3 The laplace mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.4 The exponential mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.5 Composition theorems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.6 The sparse vector technique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.7 Bibliographic notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

28
28
29
30
37
41
55
64

ii

iii
4 Releasing Linear Queries with Correlated Error
4.1 An offline algorithm: SmallDB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4.2 An online mechanism: private multiplicative weights . . . .
4.3 Bibliographical notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

66
70
76
86

5 Generalizations
88
5.1 Mechanisms via α-nets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
5.2 The iterative construction mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.3 Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
5.4 Bibliographical notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
6 Boosting for Queries
117
6.1 The boosting for queries algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
6.2 Base synopsis generators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
6.3 Bibliographical notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
7 When Worst-Case Sensitivity is Atypical140
7.1 Subsample and aggregate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
7.2 Propose-test-Release . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
7.3 Stability and privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
8 Lower Bounds and Separation Results
158
8.1 Reconstruction attacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
8.2 Lower bounds for differential privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
8.3 Bibliographic notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
9 Differential Privacy and Computational Complexity
172
9.1 Polynomial time curators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
9.2 Some hard-to-Syntheticize distributions . . . . . . . . . . 177
9.3 Polynomial time adversaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
9.4 Bibliographic notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
10 Differential Privacy and Mechanism Design
189
10.1 Differential privacy as a solution concept . . . . . . . . . . 191
10.2 Differential privacy as a tool in mechanism design . . . . . 193
10.3 Mechanism design for privacy aware agents . . . . . . . . 204
10.4 Bibliographical notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

iv
11 Differential Privacy and Machine Learning216
11.1 The sample complexity of differentially private
machine learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
11.2 Differentially private online learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
11.3 Empirical risk minimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
11.4 Bibliographical notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
12 Additional Models
231
12.1 The local model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
12.2 Pan-private streaming model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
12.3 Continual observation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
12.4 Average case error for query release . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
12.5 Bibliographical notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
13 Reflections
254
13.1 Toward practicing privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
13.2 The differential privacy lens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

Appendices260

A The Gaussian Mechanism
261
A.1 Bibliographic notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
B Composition Theorems for (ε, δ)-DP
267
B.1 Extension of Theorem 3.16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Acknowledgments

269

References

270

Abstract
The problem of privacy-preserving data analysis has a long history
spanning multiple disciplines. As electronic data about individuals
becomes increasingly detailed, and as technology enables ever more
powerful collection and curation of these data, the need increases for arobust, meaningful, and mathematically rigorous definition of privacy,
together with a computationally rich class of algorithms that satisfy
this definition. Differential Privacy is such a definition.
After motivating and discussing the meaning of differential privacy,
the preponderance of this monograph is devoted to fundamental techniques for achieving differential privacy, and application of these techniques in creative combinations, using the query-release problem as an
ongoing example. A key point is that, by rethinking the computationalgoal, one can often obtain far better results than would be achieved bymethodically replacing each step of a non-private computation with adifferentially private implementation. Despite some astonishingly powerful computational results, there are still fundamental limitations —not just on what can be achieved with differential privacy but on what
can be achieved with any method that protects against a complete
breakdown in privacy. Virtually all the algorithms discussed herein
maintain differential privacy against adversaries of arbitrary computational power. Certain algorithms are computationally intensive, others are efficient. Computational complexity for the adversary and thealgorithm are both discussed.
We then turn from fundamentals to applications other than queryrelease, discussing differentially private methods for mechanism design
and machine learning. The vast majority of the literature on differentially private algorithms considers a single, static, database that is subject to many analyses. Differential privacy in other models, including
distributed databases and computations on data streams is discussed.

2Finally, we note that this work is meant as a thorough introduction to the problems and techniques of differential privacy, but is notintended to be an exhaustive survey — there is by now a vast amount ofwork in differential privacy, and we can cover only a small portion of it.

C. Dwork and A. Roth. The Algorithmic Foundations of Differential Privacy. Foundations and Trends R in Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 9, nos. 3–4, pp. 211–407,
2014.
DOI: 10.1561/0400000042.

Preface

The problem of privacy-preserving data analysis has a long history
spanning multiple disciplines. As electronic data about individuals
becomes increasingly detailed, and as technology enables ever more
powerful collection and curation of these data, the need increases for arobust, meaningful, and mathematically rigorous definition of privacy,
together with a computationally rich class of algorithms that satisfy
this definition. Differential Privacy is such a definition.
After motivating and discussing the meaning of differential privacy,
the preponderance of the book is devoted to fundamental techniques
for achieving differential privacy, and application of these techniques increative combinations (Sections 3–7), using the query-release problem
as an ongoing example. A key point is that, by rethinking the computational goal, one can often obtain far better results than would beachieved by methodically replacing each step of a non-private computation with a differentially private implementation.
Despite some astonishingly powerful computational results, there
are still fundamental limitations — not just on what can be achieved
with differential privacy but on what can be achieved with any methodthat protects against a complete breakdown in privacy (Section 8).
Virtually all the algorithms discussed in this book maintaindifferential privacy against adversaries of arbitrary computational
power. Certain algorithms are computationally intensive, others are3

4efficient. Computational complexity for the adversary and the algorithm are both discussed in Section 9.
In Sections 10 and 11 we turn from fundamentals to applications
other than query-release, discussing differentially private methods formechanism design and machine learning. The vast majority of the literature on differentially private algorithms considers a single, static,
database that is subject to many analyses. Differential privacy in othermodels, including distributed databases and computations on data
streams is discussed in Section 12.
Finally, we note that this book is meant as a thorough introduction to the problems and techniques of differential privacy, but is notintended to be an exhaustive survey — there is by now a vast amount ofwork in differential privacy, and we can cover only a small portion of it.

1
The Promise of Differential Privacy“Differential privacy” describes a promise, made by a data holder, or
curator, to a data subject: “You will not be affected, adversely or otherwise, by allowing your data to be used in any study or analysis,
no matter what other studies, data sets, or information sources, areavailable.” At their best, differentially private database mechanisms
can make confidential data widely available for accurate data analysis,
without resorting to data clean rooms, data usage agreements, data protection plans, or restricted views. Nonetheless, data utility will eventually be consumed: the Fundamental Law of Information Recovery statesthat overly accurate answers to too many questions will destroy privacy
in a spectacular way.1 The goal of algorithmic research on differential
privacy is to postpone this inevitability as long as possible.
Differential privacy addresses the paradox of learning nothing about
an individual while learning useful information about a population. A
medical database may teach us that smoking causes cancer, affecting
an insurance company’s view of a smoker’s long-term medical costs.
Has the smoker been harmed by the analysis? Perhaps — his insurance
1

This result, proved in Section 8.1, applies to all techniques for privacy-preserving
data analysis, and not just to differential privacy.

5

6The Promise of Differential Privacy

premiums may rise, if the insurer knows he smokes. He may also be
helped — learning of his health risks, he enters a smoking cessation
program. Has the smoker’s privacy been compromised? It is certainly
the case that more is known about him after the study than was known
before, but was his information “leaked”? Differential privacy will takethe view that it was not, with the rationale that the impact on thesmoker is the same independent of whether or not he was in the study.
It is the conclusions reached in the study that affect the smoker, nothis presence or absence in the data set.
Differential privacy ensures that the same conclusions, for example,
smoking causes cancer, will be reached, independent of whether any
individual opts into or opts out of the data set. Specifically, it ensuresthat any sequence of outputs (responses to queries) is “essentially”
equally likely to occur, independent of the presence or absence of any
individual. Here, the probabilities are taken over random choices madeby the privacy mechanism (something controlled by the data curator),and the term “essentially” is captured by a parameter, ε. A smaller εwill yield better privacy (and less accurate responses).
Differential privacy is a definition, not an algorithm. For a given
computational task T and a given value of ε there will be many differentially private algorithms for achieving T in an ε-differentially private
manner. Some will have better accuracy than others. When ε is small,finding a highly accurate ε-differentially private algorithm for T can bedifficult, much as finding a numerically stable algorithm for a specificcomputational task can require effort.

1.1

Privacy-preserving data analysis

Differential privacy is a definition of privacy tailored to the problem
of privacy-preserving data analysis. We briefly address some concernswith other approaches to this problem.
Data Cannot be Fully Anonymized and Remain Useful. Generally
speaking, the richer the data, the more interesting and useful it is.
This has led to notions of “anonymization” and “removal of personally identifiable information,” where the hope is that portions of the1.1. Privacy-preserving data analysis

7

data records can be suppressed and the remainder published and used
for analysis. However, the richness of the data enables “naming” anindividual by a sometimes surprising collection of fields, or attributes,
such as the combination of zip code, date of birth, and sex, or even thenames of three movies and the approximate dates on which an individual watched these movies. This “naming” capability can be used ina linkage attack to match “anonymized” records with non-anonymized
records in a different dataset. Thus, the medical records of the governor of Massachussetts were identified by matching anonymized medical
encounter data with (publicly available) voter registration records, andNetflix subscribers whose viewing histories were contained in a collection of anonymized movie records published by Netflix as training data
for a competition on recommendation were identified by linkage with
the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).
Differential privacy neutralizes linkage attacks: since being differentially private is a property of the data access mechanism, and isunrelated to the presence or absence of auxiliary information available
to the adversary, access to the IMDb would no more permit a linkage
attack to someone whose history is in the Netflix training set than tosomeone not in the training set.
Re-Identification of “Anonymized” Records is Not the Only Risk. Reidentification of “anonymized” data records is clearly undesirable, notonly because of the re-identification per se, which certainly reveals
membership in the data set, but also because the record may containcompromising information that, were it tied to an individual, could
cause harm. A collection of medical encounter records from a specificurgent care center on a given date may list only a small number ofdistinct complaints or diagnoses. The additional information that aneighbor visited the facility on the date in question gives a fairly narrow range of possible diagnoses for the neighbor’s condition. The factthat it may not be possible to match a specific record to the neighborprovides minimal privacy protection to the neighbor.
Queries Over Large Sets are Not Protective. Questions about specificindividuals cannot be safely answered with accuracy, and indeed one

8

The Promise of Differential Privacy

might wish to reject them out of hand (were it computationally feasible to recognize them). Forcing queries to be over large sets is nota panacea, as shown by the following differencing attack. Suppose it
is known that Mr. X is in a certain medical database. Taken together,
the answers to the two large queries “How many people in the database
have the sickle cell trait?” and “How many people, not named X, in the
database have the sickle cell trait?” yield the sickle cell status of Mr. X.
Query Auditing Is Problematic. One might be tempted to audit thesequence of queries and responses, with the goal of interdicting any
response if, in light of the history, answering the current query would
compromise privacy. For example, the auditor may be on the lookout
for pairs of queries that would constitute a differencing attack. There
are two difficulties with this approach. First, it is possible that refusing
to answer a query is itself disclosive. Second, query auditing can becomputationally infeasible; indeed if the query language is sufficiently
rich there may not even exist an algorithmic procedure for deciding if
a pair of queries constitutes a differencing attack.
Summary Statistics are Not “Safe.” In some sense, the failure ofsummary statistics as a privacy solution concept is immediate fromthe differencing attack just described. Other problems with summary
statistics include a variety of reconstruction attacks against a databasein which each individual has a “secret bit” to be protected. The utility
goal may be to permit, for example, questions of the form “How many
people satisfying property P have secret bit value 1?” The goal of theadversary, on the other hand, is to significantly increase his chanceof guessing the secret bits of individuals. The reconstruction attacks
described in Section 8.1 show the difficulty of protecting against evena linear number of queries of this type: unless sufficient inaccuracy is
introduced almost all the secret bits can be reconstructed.
A striking illustration of the risks of releasing summary statistics
is in an application of a statistical technique, originally intended for
confirming or refuting the presence of an individual’s DNA in a forensic mix, to ruling an individual in or out of a genome-wide association
study. According to a Web site of the Human Genome Project, “Single
nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs (pronounced “snips”), are DNA

1.1. Privacy-preserving data analysis

9sequence variations that occur when a single nucleotide (A,T,C, or G)
in the genome sequence is altered. For example a SNP might change
the DNA sequence AAGGCTAA to ATGGCTAA.” In this case we say
there are two alleles: A and T. For such a SNP we can ask, given a
particular reference population, what are the frequencies of each of thetwo possible alleles? Given the allele frequencies for SNPs in the reference population, we can examine how these frequencies may differ
for a subpopulation that has a particular disease (the “case” group),
looking for alleles that are associated with the disease. For this reason,
genome-wide association studies may contain the allele frequencies of
the case group for large numbers of SNPs. By definition, these allele
frequencies are only aggregated statistics, and the (erroneous) assumption has been that, by virtue of this aggregation, they preserve privacy.
However, given the genomic data of an individual, it is theoreticallypossible to determine if the individual is in the case group (and, therefore, has the disease). In response, the National Institutes of Healthand Wellcome Trust terminated public access to aggregate frequency
data from the studies they fund.
This is a challenging problem even for differential privacy, due tothe large number — hundreds of thousands or even one million — ofmeasurements involved and the relatively small number of individuals
in any case group.
“Ordinary” Facts are Not “OK.” Revealing “ordinary” facts, such aspurchasing bread, may be problematic if a data subject is followed overtime. For example, consider Mr. T, who regularly buys bread, year afteryear, until suddenly switching to rarely buying bread. An analyst might
conclude Mr. T most likely has been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.
The analyst might be correct, or might be incorrect; either way Mr. T
is harmed.
“Just a Few.” In some cases a particular technique may in fact provide
privacy protection for “typical” members of a data set, or more generally, “most” members. In such cases one often hears the argumentthat the technique is adequate, as it compromises the privacy of “justa few” participants. Setting aside the concern that outliers may be precisely those people for whom privacy is most important, the “just a few”

10

The Promise of Differential Privacy

philosophy is not intrinsically without merit: there is a social judgment,a weighing of costs and benefits, to be made. A well-articulated definition of privacy consistent with the “just a few” philosophy has yet to
be developed; however, for a single data set, “just a few” privacy can beachieved by randomly selecting a subset of rows and releasing them intheir entirety (Lemma 4.3, Section 4). Sampling bounds describing thequality of statistical analysis that can be carried out on random subsamples govern the number of rows to be released. Differential privacy
provides an alternative when the “just a few” philosophy is rejected.

1.2

Bibliographic notes

Sweeney [81] linked voter registration records to “anonymized” medical
encounter data; Narayanan and Shmatikov carried out a linkage attack
against anonymized ranking data published by Netflix [65]. The workon presence in a forensic mix is due to Homer et al. [46]. The firstreconstruction attacks were due to Dinur and Nissim [18].

2
Basic Terms

This section motivates and presents the formal definition of differential
privacy, and enumerates some of its key properties.

2.1

The model of computation

We assume the existence of a trusted and trustworthy curator who
holds the data of individuals in a database D, typically comprised ofsome number n of rows. The intuition is that each row contains thedata of a single individual, and, still speaking intuitively, the privacy
goal is to simultaneously protect every individual row while permitting
statistical analysis of the database as a whole.
In the non-interactive, or offline, model the curator produces somekind of object, such as a “synthetic database,” collection of summary
statistics, or “sanitized database” once and for all. After this release thecurator plays no further role and the original data may be destroyed.
A query is a function to be applied to a database. The interactive,
or online, model permits the data analyst to ask queries adaptively,
deciding which query to pose next based on the observed responses toprevious queries.
1112

Basic Terms

The trusted curator can be replaced by a protocol run by the setof individuals, using the cryptographic techniques for secure multiparty protocols, but for the most part we will not be appealing tocryptographic assumptions. Section 12 describes this and other models
studied in the literature.
When all the queries are known in advance the non-interactivemodel should give the best accuracy, as it is able to correlate noise
knowing the structure of the queries. In contrast, when no information
about the queries is known in advance, the non-interactive model poses
severe challenges, as it must provide answers to all possible queries.
As we will see, to ensure privacy, or even to prevent privacy catastrophes, accuracy will necessarily deteriorate with the number of questions
asked, and providing accurate answers to all possible questions will be
infeasible.
A privacy mechanism, or simply a mechanism, is an algorithm thattakes as input a database, a universe X of data types (the set of all
possible database rows), random bits, and, optionally, a set of queries,
and produces an output string. The hope is that the output string canbe decoded to produce relatively accurate answers to the queries, if
the latter are present. If no queries are presented then we are in the
non-interactive case, and the hope is that the output string can beinterpreted to provide answers to future queries.
In some cases we may require that the output string be a synthetic
database. This is a multiset drawn from the universe X of possible
database rows. The decoding method in this case is to carry out thequery on the synthetic database and then to apply some sort of simple
transformation, such as multiplying by a scaling factor, to obtain an
approximation to the the true answer to the query.

2.2

Towards defining private data analysis

A natural approach to defining privacy in the context of data analysis is to require that the analyst knows no more about any individualin the data set after the analysis is completed than she knew before
the analysis was begun. It is also natural to formalize this goal by2.2. Towards defining private data analysis

13

requiring that the adversary’s prior and posterior views about an individual (i.e., before and after having access to the database) shouldn’t
be “too different,” or that access to the database shouldn’t change theadversary’s views about any individual “too much.” However, if thedatabase teaches anything at all, this notion of privacy is unachievable. For example, suppose the adversary’s (incorrect) prior view isthat everyone has 2 left feet. Access to the statistical database teaches
that almost everyone has one left foot and one right foot. The adversary
now has a very different view of whether or not any given respondent
has two left feet.
Part of the appeal of before/after, or “nothing is learned,” approachto defining privacy is the intuition that if nothing is learned about
an individual then the individual cannot be harmed by the analysis.
However, the “smoking causes cancer” example shows this intuition to
be flawed; the culprit is auxiliary information (Mr. X smokes).
The “nothing is learned” approach to defining privacy is reminiscentof semantic security for a cryptosystem. Roughly speaking, semantic
security says that nothing is learned about the plaintext (the unencrypted message) from the ciphertext. That is, anything known about
the plaintext after seeing the ciphertext was known before seeing the
ciphertext. So if there is auxiliary information saying that the ciphertext is an encryption of either “dog” or “cat,” then the ciphertext
leaks no further information about which of “dog” or “cat” has been
encrypted. Formally, this is modeled by comparing the ability of theeavesdropper to guess which of “dog” and “cat” has been encrypted
to the ability of a so-called adversary simulator, who has the auxiliary information but does not have access to the ciphertext, to guessthe same thing. If for every eavesdropping adversary, and all auxiliary
information (to which both the adversary and the simulator are privy),
the adversary simulator has essentially the same odds of guessing as
does the eavesdropper, then the system enjoys semantic security. Of
course, for the system to be useful, the legitimate receiver must be able
to correctly decrypt the message; otherwise semantic security can beachieved trivially.
We know that, under standard computational assumptions, semantically secure cryptosystems exist, so why can we not build semantically14

Basic Terms

secure private database mechanisms that yield answers to queries while
keeping individual rows secret?
First, the analogy is not perfect: in a semantically secure cryptosystem there are three parties: the message sender (who encrypts
the plaintext message), the message receiver (who decrypts the ciphertext), and the eavesdropper (who is frustrated by her inability to learn
anything about the plaintext that she did not already know before
it was sent). In contrast, in the setting of private data analysis there
are only two parties: the curator, who runs the privacy mechanism(analogous to the sender) and the data analyst, who receives the informative responses to queries (like the message receiver) and also tries tosqueeze out privacy-compromising information about individuals (likethe eavesdropper). Because the legitimate receiver is the same party as
the snooping adversary, the analogy to encryption is flawed: denying
all information to the adversary means denying all information to thedata analyst.
Second, as with an encryption scheme, we require the privacy mechanism to be useful, which means that it teaches the analyst something
she did not previously know. This teaching is unavailable to an adversary simulator; that is, no simulator can “predict” what the analyst
has learned. We can therefore look at the database as a weak sourceof random (unpredictable) bits, from which we can extract some very
high quality randomness to be used as a random pad. This can be usedin an encryption technique in which a secret message is added to arandom value (the “random pad”) in order to produce a string that
information-theoretically hides the secret. Only someone knowing therandom pad can learn the secret; any party that knows nothing about
the pad learns nothing at all about the secret, no matter his or her
computational power. Given access to the database, the analyst canlearn the random pad, but the adversary simulator, not given accessto the database, learns nothing at all about the pad. Thus, given as
auxiliary information the encryption of a secret using the random pad,the analyst can decrypt the secret, but the adversary simulator learns
nothing at all about the secret. This yields a huge disparity between
the ability of the adversary/analyst to learn the secret and the ability

2.3. Formalizing differential privacy

15of the adversary simulator to do the same thing, eliminating all hopeof anything remotely resembling semantic security.
The obstacle in both the smoking causes cancer example and thehope for semantic security is auxiliary information. Clearly, to bemeaningful, a privacy guarantee must hold even in the context of“reasonable” auxiliary knowledge, but separating reasonable from arbitrary auxiliary knowledge is problematic. For example, the analyst
using a government database might be an employee at a major searchengine company. What are “reasonable” assumptions about the auxiliary knowledge information available to such a person?

2.3

Formalizing differential privacy

We will begin with the technical definition of differential privacy, andthen go on to interpret it. Differential privacy will provide privacy byprocess; in particular it will introduce randomness. An early example of privacy by randomized process is randomized response, a technique developed in the social sciences to collect statistical information
about embarassing or illegal behavior, captured by having a property P .
Study participants are told to report whether or not they have property P as follows:
1. Flip a coin.
2. If tails, then respond truthfully.
3. If heads, then flip a second coin and respond “Yes” if heads and“No” if tails.
“Privacy” comes from the plausible deniability of any outcome; in particular, if having property P corresponds to engaging in illegal behavior,even a “Yes” answer is not incriminating, since this answer occurs withprobability at least 1/4 whether or not the respondent actually has
property P . Accuracy comes from an understanding of the noise generation procedure (the introduction of spurious “Yes” and “No” answers
from the randomization): The expected number of “Yes” answers is
1/4 times the number of participants who do not have property P plus
3/4 the number having property P . Thus, if p is the true fraction of

16

Basic Terms

participants having property P , the expected number of “Yes” answers
is (1/4)(1 − p) + (3/4)p = (1/4) + p/2. Thus, we can estimate p as twice
the fraction answering “Yes” minus 1/2, that is, 2((1/4) + p/2) − 1/2.
Randomization is essential; more precisely, any non-trivial privacy
guarantee that holds regardless of all present or even future sourcesof auxiliary information, including other databases, studies, Web sites,
on-line communities, gossip, newspapers, government statistics, and so
on, requires randomization. This follows from a simple hybrid argument, which we now sketch. Suppose, for the sake of contradiction,that we have a non-trivial deterministic algorithm. Non-triviality saysthat there exists a query and two databases that yield different outputs under this query. Changing one row at a time we see there exists
a pair of databases differing only in the value of a single row, on which
the same query yields different outputs. An adversary knowing thatthe database is one of these two almost identical databases learns thevalue of the data in the unknown row.
We will therefore need to discuss the input and output space ofrandomized algorithms. Throughout this monograph we work with discrete probability spaces. Sometimes we will describe our algorithms
as sampling from continuous distributions, but these should always
be discretized to finite precision in an appropriately careful way (seeRemark 2.1 below). In general, a randomized algorithm with domain
A and (discrete) range B will be associated with a mapping from A tothe probability simplex over B, denoted ∆(B):
Definition 2.1 (Probability Simplex). Given a discrete set B, the probability simplex over B, denoted ∆(B) is defined to be:∆(B) =

x ∈ R|B| : xi ≥ 0 for all i and

|B|
X
i=1




xi = 1

Definition 2.2 (Randomized Algorithm). A randomized algorithm M
with domain A and discrete range B is associated with a mapping
M : A → ∆(B). On input a ∈ A, the algorithm M outputs M(a) = b
with probability (M (a))b for each b ∈ B. The probability space is overthe coin flips of the algorithm M.

2.3. Formalizing differential privacy

17

We will think of databases x as being collections of records from a
universe X . It will often be convenient to represent databases by their
histograms: x ∈ N|X | , in which each entry xi represents the number of
elements in the database x of type i ∈ X (we abuse notation slightly, letting the symbol N denote the set of all non-negative integers, includingzero). In this representation, a natural measure of the distance between
two databases x and y will be their `1 distance:
Definition 2.3 (Distance Between Databases). The `1 norm of adatabase x is denoted kxk1 and is defined to be:
kxk1 =|X |X|xi | .

i=1

The `1 distance between two databases x and y is kx − yk1
Note that kxk1 is a measure of the size of a database x (i.e., thenumber of records it contains), and kx − yk1 is a measure of how manyrecords differ between x and y.
Databases may also be represented by multisets of rows (elementsof X ) or even ordered lists of rows, which is a special case of a set,
where the row number becomes part of the name of the element. In thiscase distance between databases is typically measured by the Hamming
distance, i.e., the number of rows on which they differ.
However, unless otherwise noted, we will use the histogram
representation described above. (Note, however, that even when thehistogram notation is more mathematically convenient, in actual
implementations, the multiset representation will often be much moreconcise).
We are now ready to formally define differential privacy, which intuitively will guarantee that a randomized algorithm behaves similarly on
similar input databases.
Definition 2.4 (Differential Privacy). A randomized algorithm M withdomain N|X | is (ε, δ)-differentially private if for all S ⊆ Range(M) andfor all x, y ∈ N|X | such that kx − yk1 ≤ 1:
Pr[M(x) ∈ S] ≤ exp(ε) Pr[M(y) ∈ S] + δ,

18

Basic Terms

where the probability space is over the coin flips of the mechanism M.
If δ = 0, we say that M is ε-differentially private.
Typically we are interested in values of δ that are less than the
inverse of any polynomial in the size of the database. In particular,
values of δ on the order of 1/kxk1 are very dangerous: they permit “preserving privacy” by publishing the complete records of a small numberof database participants — precisely the “just a few” philosophy discussed in Section 1.
Even when δ is negligible, however, there are theoretical distinctions between (ε, 0)- and (ε, δ)-differential privacy. Chief among theseis what amounts to a switch of quantification order. (ε, 0)-differential
privacy ensures that, for every run of the mechanism M(x), the output observed is (almost) equally likely to be observed on every neighboring database, simultaneously. In contrast (ε, δ)-differential privacy
says that for every pair of neighboring databases x, y, it is extremely
unlikely that, ex post facto the observed value M(x) will be much moreor much less likely to be generated when the database is x than when
the database is y. However, given an output ξ ∼ M(x) it may be possible to find a database y such that ξ is much more likely to be producedon y than it is when the database is x. That is, the mass of ξ in the
distribution M(y) may be substantially larger than its mass in the
distribution M(x).
The quantity(ξ)LM(x)kM(y) = lnPr[M(x) = ξ]Pr[M(y) = ξ]is important to us; we refer to it as the privacy loss incurred by observing ξ. This loss might be positive (when an event is more likely under xthan under y) or it might be negative (when an event is more likely
under y than under x). As we will see in Lemma 3.17, (ε, δ)-differential
privacy ensures that for all adjacent x, y, the absolute value of the privacy loss will be bounded by ε with probability at least 1−δ. As always,
the probability space is over the coins of the mechanism M.
Differential privacy is immune to post-processing: A data analyst,
without additional knowledge about the private database, cannot compute a function of the output of a private algorithm M and make it2.3. Formalizing differential privacy

19

less differentially private. That is, if an algorithm protects an individual’s privacy, then a data analyst cannot increase privacy loss — either
under the formal definition or even in any intuitive sense — simply bysitting in a corner and thinking about the output of the algorithm. Formally, the composition of a data-independent mapping f with an (ε, δ)differentially private algorithm M is also (ε, δ) differentially private:
Proposition 2.1 (Post-Processing). Let M : N|X | → R be a randomized
algorithm that is (ε, δ)-differentially private. Let f : R → R0 be an
arbitrary randomized mapping. Then f ◦ M : N|X | → R0 is (ε, δ)differentially private.
Proof. We prove the proposition for a deterministic function
f : R → R0 . The result then follows because any randomized mapping
can be decomposed into a convex combination of deterministic functions, and a convex combination of differentially private mechanisms isdifferentially private.
Fix any pair of neighboring databases x, y with kx − yk1 ≤ 1, andfix any event S ⊆ R0 . Let T = {r ∈ R : f (r) ∈ S}. We then have:Pr[f (M(x)) ∈ S] = Pr[M(x) ∈ T ]≤ exp() Pr[M(y) ∈ T ] + δ= exp() Pr[f (M(y)) ∈ S] + δ
which was what we wanted.
It follows immediately from Definition 2.4 that (ε, 0)-differential privacy composes in a straightforward way: the composition of two (ε, 0)differentially private mechanisms is (2ε, 0)-differentially private. Moregenerally (Theorem 3.16), “the epsilons and the deltas add up”: thecomposition of k differentially private mechanisms, where the ith mechPP
anism is (εi , δi )-differentially private, for 1 ≤ i ≤ k, is ( i εi , i δi )differentially private.
Group privacy for (ε, 0)-differentially private mechanisms also follows immediately from Definition 2.4, with the strength of the privacy
guarantee drops linearly with the size of the group.

20

Basic Terms

Theorem 2.2. Any (ε, 0)-differentially private mechanism M is (kε, 0)differentially private for groups of size k. That is, for all kx − yk1 ≤ k
and all S ⊆ Range(M)Pr[M(x) ∈ S] ≤ exp(kε) Pr[M(y) ∈ S],
where the probability space is over the coin flips of the mechanism M.
This addresses, for example, the question of privacy in surveys that
include multiple family members.1
More generally, composition and group privacy are not the samething and the improved composition bounds in Section 3.5.2 (Theorem 3.20), which substantially improve upon the factor of k, do not —and cannot — yield the same gains for group privacy, even when δ = 0.
2.3.1

What differential privacy promises

An Economic View. Differential privacy promises to protect individuals from any additional harm that they might face due to their data
being in the private database x that they would not have faced had
their data not been part of x. Although individuals may indeed faceharm once the results M(x) of a differentially private mechanism M
have been released, differential privacy promises that the probability ofharm was not significantly increased by their choice to participate. Thisis a very utilitarian definition of privacy, because when an individual isdeciding whether or not to include her data in a database that will be
used in a differentially private manner, it is exactly this difference that
she is considering: the probability of harm given that she participates,
as compared to the probability of harm given that she does not participate. She has no control over the remaining contents of the database.
Given the promise of differential privacy, she is assured that she should
1

However, as the group gets larger, the privacy guarantee deteriorates, and thisis what we want: clearly, if we replace an entire surveyed population, say, of cancer
patients, with a completely different group of respondents, say, healthy teenagers,
we should get different answers to queries about the fraction of respondents who
regularly run three miles each day. Although something similar holds for (ε, δ)differential privacy, the approximation term δ takes a big hit, and we only obtain(kε, ke(k−1)ε δ)-differential privacy for groups of size k.

2.3. Formalizing differential privacy

21

be almost indifferent between participating and not, from the point ofview of future harm. Given any incentive — from altruism to monetary
reward — differential privacy may convince her to allow her data to
be used. This intuition can be formalized in a utility-theoretic sense,
which we here briefly sketch.
Consider an individual i who has arbitrary preferences over theset of all possible future events, which we denote by A. These preferences are expressed by a utility function ui : A → R≥0 , and wesay that individual i experiences utility ui (a) in the event that a ∈ A
comes to pass. Suppose that x ∈ N|X | is a data-set containing individual is private data, and that M is an ε-differentially private algorithm. Let y be a data-set that is identical to x except that it does notinclude the data of individual i (in particular, kx − yk1 = 1), and let
f : Range(M) → ∆(A) be the (arbitrary) function that determines the
distribution over future events A, conditioned on the output of mechanism M . By the guarantee of differential privacy, together with theresilience to arbitrary post-processing guaranteed by Proposition 2.1,
we have:Ea∼f (M(x)) [ui (a)] =

X
a∈A

≤

X
a∈A

ui (a) ·Pr [a]f (M(x))ui (a) · exp(ε)

Pr [a]f (M(y))= exp(ε)Ea∼f (M(y)) [ui (a)]Similarly,Ea∼f (M(x)) [ui (a)] ≥ exp(−ε)Ea∼f (M(y)) [ui (a)].
Hence, by promising a guarantee of ε-differential privacy, a data analyst
can promise an individual that his expected future utility will not beharmed by more than an exp(ε) ≈ (1+ε) factor. Note that this promise
holds independently of the individual is utility function ui , and holds
simultaneously for multiple individuals who may have completely different utility functions.

22

Basic Terms

2.3.2

What differential privacy does not promise

As we saw in the Smoking Causes Cancer example, while differential
privacy is an extremely strong guarantee, it does not promise unconditional freedom from harm. Nor does it create privacy where none
previously exists. More generally, differential privacy does not guarantee that what one believes to be one’s secrets will remain secret. It
merely ensures that one’s participation in a survey will not in itself
be disclosed, nor will participation lead to disclosure of any specifics
that one has contributed to the survey. It is very possible that conclusions drawn from the survey may reflect statistical information about
an individual. A health survey intended to discover early indicators ofa particular ailment may produce strong, even conclusive results; thatthese conclusions hold for a given individual is not evidence of a differential privacy violation; the individual may not even have participatedin the survey (again, differential privacy ensures that these conclusive
results would be obtained with very similar probability whether or not
the individual participated in the survey). In particular, if the survey
teaches us that specific private attributes correlate strongly with publicly observable attributes, this is not a violation of differential privacy,
since this same correlation would be observed with almost the sameprobability independent of the presence or absence of any respondent.
Qualitative Properties of Differential Privacy. Having introduced
and formally defined differential privacy, we recaptiluate its key desirable qualities.
1. Protection against arbitrary risks, moving beyond protection
against re-identification.
2. Automatic neutralization of linkage attacks, including all those
attempted with all past, present, and future datasets and otherforms and sources of auxiliary information.
3. Quantification of privacy loss. Differential privacy is not a binary
concept, and has a measure of privacy loss. This permits comparisons among different techniques: for a fixed bound on privacy
loss, which technique provides better accuracy? For a fixed accuracy, which technique provides better privacy?

2.3. Formalizing differential privacy

23

4. Composition. Perhaps most crucially, the quantification of loss
also permits the analysis and control of cumulative privacy loss
over multiple computations. Understanding the behavior of differentially private mechanisms under composition enables the design
and analysis of complex differentially private algorithms from
simpler differentially private building blocks.
5. Group Privacy. Differential privacy permits the analysis and control of privacy loss incurred by groups, such as families.
6. Closure Under Post-Processing Differential privacy is immune topost-processing: A data analyst, without additional knowledge
about the private database, cannot compute a function of theoutput of a differentially private algorithm M and make it lessdifferentially private. That is, a data analyst cannot increase privacy loss, either under the formal definition or even in any intuitive sense, simply by sitting in a corner and thinking about theoutput of the algorithm, no matter what auxiliary information isavailable.
These are the signal attributes of differential privacy. Can we provea converse? That is, do these attributes, or some subset thereof, imply
differential privacy? Can differential privacy be weakened in theserespects and still be meaningful? These are open questions.
2.3.3

Final remarks on the definition

The Granularity of Privacy. Claims of differential privacy should be
carefully scrutinized to ascertain the level of granularity at which privacy is being promised. Differential privacy promises that the behaviorof an algorithm will be roughly unchanged even if a single entry inthe database is modified. But what constitutes a single entry in the
database? Consider for example a database that takes the form of agraph. Such a database might encode a social network: each individuali ∈ [n] is represented by a vertex in the graph, and friendships between
individuals are represented by edges.
We could consider differential privacy at a level of granularity corresponding to individuals: that is, we could require that differentially24

Basic Terms

private algorithms be insensitive to the addition or removal of any vertex from the graph. This gives a strong privacy guarantee, but might infact be stronger than we need. the addition or removal of a single vertex
could after all add or remove up to n edges in the graph. Dependingon what it is we hope to learn from the graph, insensitivity to n edge
removals might be an impossible constraint to meet.
We could on the other hand consider differential privacy at a levelof granularity corresponding to edges, and ask our algorithms to beinsensitive only to the addition or removal of single, or small numbersof, edges from the graph. This is of course a weaker guarantee, but
might still be sufficient for some purposes. Informally speaking, if we
promise ε-differential privacy at the level of a single edge, then no data
analyst should be able to conclude anything about the existence of any
subset of 1/ε edges in the graph. In some circumstances, large groupsof social contacts might not be considered sensitive information: forexample, an individual might not feel the need to hide the fact thatthe majority of his contacts are with individuals in his city or workplace,because where he lives and where he works are public information. On
the other hand, there might be a small number of social contacts whose
existence is highly sensitive (for example a prospective new employer,
or an intimate friend). In this case, edge privacy should be sufficient
to protect sensitive information, while still allowing a fuller analysis of
the data than vertex privacy. Edge privacy will protect such an individual’s sensitive information provided that he has fewer than 1/ε suchfriends.
As another example, a differentially private movie recommendation
system can be designed to protect the data in the training set at the“event” level of single movies, hiding the viewing/rating of any single
movie but not, say, hiding an individual’s enthusiasm for cowboy westerns or gore, or at the “user” level of an individual’s entire viewing andrating history.
All Small Epsilons Are Alike. When ε is small, (ε, 0)-differential
privacy asserts that for all pairs of adjacent databases x, y and all
outputs o, an adversary cannot distinguish which is the true database2.3. Formalizing differential privacy

25

on the basis of observing o. When ε is small, failing to be (ε, 0)differentially private is not necessarily alarming — for example, themechanism may be (2ε, 0)-differentially private. The nature of the privacy guarantees with differing but small epsilons are quite similar.
But what of large values for ? Failure to be (15, 0)-differentially private merely says there exist neighboring databases and an output ofor which the ratio of probabilities of observing o conditioned on the
database being, respectively, x or y, is large. An output of o might bevery unlikely (this is addressed by (ε, δ)-differential privacy); databases
x and y might be terribly contrived and ulikely to occur in the “realworld”; the adversary may not have the right auxiliary information torecognize that a revealing output has occurred; or may not know enoughabout the database(s) to determine the value of their symmetric difference. Thus, much as a weak cryptosystem may leak anything from only
the least significant bit of a message to the complete decryption key,
the failure to be (ε, 0)- or (ε, δ)-differentially private may range from
effectively meaningless privacy breaches to complete revelation of theentire database. A large epsilon is large after its own fashion.
A Few Additional Formalisms. Our privacy mechanism M willoften take some auxiliary parameters w as input, in addition to the
database x. For example, w may specify a query qw on the database x,
or a collection Qw of queries. The mechanism M(w, x) might (respectively) respond with a differentially private approximation to qw (x) or
to some or all of the queries in Qw . For all δ ≥ 0, we say that a mechanism M(·, ·) satisfies (ε, δ)-differential privacy if for every w, M(w, ·)satisfies (ε, δ)-differential privacy.
Another example of a parameter that may be included in w is asecurity parameter κ to govern how small δ = δ(κ) should be. Thatis, M(κ, ·) should be (ε, δ(κ)) differentially private for all κ. Typically,
and throughout this monograph, we require that δ be a negligible function in κ, i.e., δ = κ−ω(1) . Thus, we think of δ as being cryptographically small, whereas ε is typically thought of as a moderately small
constant.
In the case where the auxiliary parameter w specifies a collection Qw = {q : X n → R} of queries, we call the mechanism M a

26

Basic Terms

synopsis generator. A synopsis generator outputs a (differentiallyprivate) synopsis A which can be used to compute answers to all thequeries in Qw . That is, we require that there exists a reconstruction
procedure R such that for each input v specifying a query qv ∈ Qw ,the reconstruction procedure outputs R(A, v) ∈ R. Typically, we
will require that with high probability M produces a synopsis A
such that the reconstruction procedure, using A, computes accurate
answers. That is, for all or most (weighted by some distribution) of thequeries qv ∈ Qw , the error |R(A, v) − qv (x)| will be bounded. We will
occasionally abuse notation and refer to the reconstruction procedure
taking as input the actual query q (rather than some representation vof it), and outputting R(A, q).
A special case of a synopsis is a synthetic database. As the namesuggests, the rows of a synthetic database are of the same type as
rows of the original database. An advantage to synthetic databases isthat they may be analyzed using the same software that the analyst
would use on the original database, obviating the need for a special
reconstruction procedure R.
Remark 2.1. Considerable care must be taken when programming realvalued mechanisms, such as the Laplace mechanism, due to subtleties
in the implementation of floating point numbers. Otherwise differential
privacy can be destroyed, as outputs with non-zero probability on a
database x, may, because of rounding, have zero probability on adjacent databases y. This is just one way in which the implementation of
floating point requires scrutiny in the context of differential privacy,
and it is not unique.

2.4

Bibliographic notes

The definition of differential privacy is due to Dwork et al. [23]; theprecise formulation used here and in the literature first appears in [20]and is due to Dwork and McSherry. The term “differential privacy”
was coined by Michael Schroeder. The impossibility of semantic security is due to Dwork and Naor [25]. Composition and group privacy
for (ε, 0)-differentially private mechanisms is first addressed in [23].

2.4. Bibliographic notes

27

Composition for (ε, δ)-differential privacy was first addressed in [21](but see the corrected proof in Appendix B, due to Dwork and Lei [22]).
The vulnerability of differential privacy to inappropriate implementations of floating point numbers was observed by Mironov, who proposeda mitigation [63].

3
Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems

After reviewing a few probabilistic tools, we present the Laplace mechanism, which gives differential privacy for real (vector) valued queries.
An application of this leads naturally to the exponential mechanism,
which is a method for differentially private selection from a discrete
set of candidate outputs. We then analyze the cumulative privacy
loss incurred by composing multiple differentially private mechanisms.
Finally we give a method — the sparse vector technique — for privately reporting the outcomes of a potentially very large number ofcomputations, provided that only a few are “significant.”
In this section, we describe some of the most basic techniques indifferential privacy that we will come back to use again and again. The
techniques described here form the basic building blocks for all of theother algorithms that we will develop.

3.1

Useful probabilistic tools

The following concentration inequalities will frequently be useful. We
state them in easy to use forms rather than in their strongest forms.

28

3.2. Randomized response

29

Theorem 3.1 (Additive Chernoff Bound). Let X1 , . . . , Xm be independent random variables bounded such that 0 ≤ Xi ≤ 1 for all i. Let
1 Pm
S = m
i=1 Xi denote their mean, and let µ = E[S] denote their
expected mean. Then:
Pr[S > µ + ε] ≤ e−2mε2Pr[S < µ − ε] ≤ e−2mε2Theorem 3.2 (Multiplicative Chernoff Bound). Let X1 , . . . , Xm be independent random variables bounded such that 0 ≤ Xi ≤ 1 for all i. Let
1 Pm
S = m
i=1 Xi denote their mean, and let µ = E[S] denote their
expected mean. Then:
2

Pr[S > (1 + ε)µ] ≤ e−mµε /32Pr[S < (1 − ε)µ] ≤ e−mµε /2When we do not have independent random variables, all is not lost.
We may still apply Azuma’s inequality:
Theorem 3.3 (Azuma’s Inequality). Let f be a function of m randomvariables X1 , . . . , Xm , each Xi taking values from a set Ai such thatE[f ] is bounded. Let ci denote the maximum effect of Xi on f — i.e.,
for all ai , a0i ∈ Ai :E[f |X1 , . . . , Xi−1 , Xi = ai ] − E[f |X1 , . . . , Xi−1 , Xi = a0i ] ≤ ci
Then:
2t2

!

Pr [f (X1 , . . . , Xm ) ≥ E[f ] + t] ≤ exp − Pm2
i=1 ci

Theorem
3.4 (Stirling’s Approximation). n! can be approximated by√
2nπ(n/e)n :√√2nπ(n/e)n e1/(12n+1) < n! < 2nπ(n/e)n e1/(12n) .

3.2

Randomized response

Let us recall the simple randomized response mechanism, describedin Section 2, for evaluating the frequency of embarrassing or illegal

30

Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems

behaviors. Let XYZ be such an activity. Faced with the query, “Haveyou engaged in XYZ in the past week?” the respondent is instructedto perform the following steps:
1. Flip a coin.
2. If tails, then respond truthfully.
3. If heads, then flip a second coin and respond “Yes” if heads and“No” if tails.
The intuition behind randomized response is that it provides “plausible deniability.” For example, a response of “Yes” may have beenoffered because the first and second coin flips were both Heads, which
occurs with probability 1/4. In other words, privacy is obtained by process, there are no “good” or “bad” responses. The process by which
the responses are obtained affects how they may legitimately be interpreted. As the next claim shows, randomized response is differentiallyprivate.
Claim 3.5. The version of randomized response described above is(ln 3, 0)-differentially private.
Proof. Fix a respondent. A case analysis shows that Pr[Response =Yes|Truth = Yes] = 3/4. Specifically, when the truth is “Yes” theoutcome will be “Yes” if the first coin comes up tails (probability 1/2) or the first and second come up heads (probability 1/4)),
while Pr[Response = Yes|Truth = No] = 1/4 (first comes up heads andsecond comes up tails; probability 1/4). Applying similar reasoning to
the case of a “No” answer, we obtain:
Pr[Response = Yes|Truth = Yes]
Pr[Response = Yes|Truth = No]
=

3.3

3/4
Pr[Response = No|Truth = No]
=
= 3.
1/4
Pr[Response = No|Truth = Yes]

The laplace mechanism

Numeric queries, functions f : N|X | → Rk , are one of the most fundamental types of database queries. These queries map databases to k

3.3. The laplace mechanism

31

real numbers. One of the important parameters that will determine just
how accurately we can answer such queries is their `1 sensitivity:
Definition 3.1 (`1 -sensitivity). The `1 -sensitivity of a function f :N|X | → Rk is:∆f = max kf (x) − f (y)k1 .
x,y∈N|X |kx−yk1 =1

The `1 sensitivity of a function f captures the magnitude by whicha single individual’s data can change the function f in the worst case,and therefore, intuitively, the uncertainty in the response that we must
introduce in order to hide the participation of a single individual.
Indeed, we will formalize this intuition: the sensitivity of a function
gives an upper bound on how much we must perturb its output to preserve privacy. One noise distribution naturally lends itself to differential
privacy.
Definition 3.2 (The Laplace Distribution). The Laplace Distribution(centered at 0) with scale b is the distribution with probability density
function:1|x|
Lap(x|b) =
exp −
.
2b
b
The variance of this distribution is σ 2 = 2b2 . We will sometimes write
Lap(b) to denote the Laplace distribution with scale b, and will sometimes abuse notation and write Lap(b) simply to denote a random variable X ∼ Lap(b).
The Laplace distribution is a symmetric version of the exponential
distribution.
We will now define the Laplace Mechanism. As its name suggests,
the Laplace mechanism will simply compute f , and perturb each coordinate with noise drawn from the Laplace distribution. The scale of thenoise will be calibrated to the sensitivity of f (divided by ε).1
1

Alternately, using Gaussian noise with variance calibrated to ∆f ln(1/δ)/ε,one can achieve (ε, δ)-differential privacy (see Appendix A). Use of the Laplacemechanism is cleaner and the two mechanisms behave similarly under composition(Theorem 3.20).

32

Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems

Definition 3.3 (The Laplace Mechanism). Given any function f :N|X | → Rk , the Laplace mechanism is defined as:
ML (x, f (·), ε) = f (x) + (Y1 , . . . , Yk )where Yi are i.i.d. random variables drawn from Lap(∆f /ε).
Theorem 3.6. The Laplace mechanism preserves (ε, 0)-differential
privacy.
Proof. Let x ∈ N|X | and y ∈ N|X | be such that kx − yk1 ≤ 1, andlet f (·) be some function f : N|X | → Rk . Let px denote the probability density function of ML (x, f, ε) , and let py denote the probability
density function of ML (y, f, ε). We compare the two at some arbitrary
point z ∈ Rki −zi |kYexp(− ε|f (x))
px (z)
∆f


=
ε|f
(y)
−z
|
i
i
py (z))
i=1 exp(−





∆f

k
Y



k
Y



ε(|f (y)i − zi | − |f (x)i − zi |)
exp
=
∆f
i=1
ε|f (x)i − f (y)i |
≤
exp
∆f
i=1
ε · kf (x) − f (y)k1= exp∆f≤ exp(ε),








where the first inequality follows from the triangle inequality, andthe last follows from the definition of sensitivity and the fact that(z)
≥ exp(−ε) follows by symmetry.
kx − yk1 ≤ 1. That ppxy (z)Example 3.1 (Counting Queries). Counting queries are queries of theform “How many elements in the database satisfy Property P ?” We
will return to these queries again and again, sometimes in this pureform, sometimes in fractional form (“What fraction of the elementsin the databases...?”), sometimes with weights (linear queries), andsometimes in slightly more complex forms (e.g., apply h : N|X | → [0, 1]
to each element in the database and sum the results). Counting is an3.3. The laplace mechanism

33

extremely powerful primitive. It captures everything learnable in thestatistical queries learning model, as well as many standard datamining
tasks and basic statistics. Since the sensitivity of a counting query is 1
(the addition or deletion of a single individual can change a count byat most 1), it is an immediate consequence of Theorem 3.6 that (ε, 0)differential privacy can be achieved for counting queries by the additionof noise scaled to 1/ε, that is, by adding noise drawn from Lap(1/ε).
The expected distortion, or error, is 1/ε, independent of the size of thedatabase.
A fixed but arbitrary list of m counting queries can be viewed asa vector-valued query. Absent any further information about the setof queries a worst-case bound on the sensitivity of this vector-valued
query is m, as a single individual might change every count. In thiscase (ε, 0)-differential privacy can be achieved by adding noise scaled
to m/ε to the true answer to each query.
We sometimes refer to the problem of responding to large numbersof (possibly arbitrary) queries as the query release problem.
Example 3.2 (Histogram Queries). In the special (but common) case inwhich the queries are structurally disjoint we can do much better —we don’t necessarily have to let the noise scale with the number ofqueries. An example is the histogram query. In this type of query theuniverse N|X | is partitioned into cells, and the query asks how many
database elements lie in each of the cells. Because the cells are disjoint,
the addition or removal of a single database element can affect thecount in exactly one cell, and the difference to that cell is boundedby 1, so histogram queries have sensitivity 1 and can be answeredby adding independent draws from Lap(1/ε) to the true count ineach cell.
To understand the accuracy of the Laplace mechanism for generalqueries we use the following useful fact:
Fact 3.7. If Y ∼ Lap(b), then:
Pr[|Y | ≥ t · b] = exp(−t).

34Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems

This fact, together with a union bound, gives us a simple bound on
the accuracy of the Laplace mechanism:
Theorem 3.8. Let f : N|X | → Rk , and let y = ML (x, f (·), ε). Then∀δ ∈ (0, 1]:kPr kf (x) − yk∞ ≥ ln
δ

  



·

∆f
ε



≤δ

Proof. We have:kPr kf (x) − yk∞ ≥ ln
δ


  

·

∆f
ε



"

k
∆f
= Pr max |Yi | ≥ ln
·
δ
ε
i∈[k]
  

k
≤ k · Pr |Yi | ≥ ln
δ
 
δ
= k·
k
=δ


  

·

∆f
ε

#



where the second to last inequality follows from the fact that eachYi ∼ Lap(∆f /ε) and Fact 3.7.
Example 3.3 (First Names). Suppose we wish to calculate which firstnames, from a list of 10,000 potential names, were the most common
among participants of the 2010 census. This question can be represented as a query f : N|X | → R10000 . This is a histogram query, and so
has sensitivity ∆f = 1, since every person can only have at most one
first name. Using the above theorem, we see that we can simultaneously
calculate the frequency of all 10, 000 names with (1, 0)-differential privacy, and with probability 95%, no estimate will be off by more thanan additive error of ln(10000/.05) ≈ 12.2. That’s pretty low error for anation of more than 300, 000, 000 people!
Differentially Private Selection. The task in Example 3.3 is one ofdifferentially private selection: the space of outcomes is discrete andthe task is to produce a “best” answer, in this case the most populous
histogram cell.

3.3. The laplace mechanism

35

Example 3.4 (Most Common Medical Condition). Suppose we wish toknow which condition is (approximately) the most common in the medical histories of a set of respondents, so the set of questions is, foreach condition under consideration, whether the individual has everreceived a diagnosis of this condition. Since individuals can experience
many conditions, the sensitivity of this set of questions can be high.
Nonetheless, as we next describe, this task can be addressed using addition of Lap(1/ε) noise to each of the counts (note the small scale of thenoise, which is independent of the total number of conditions). Crucially, the m noisy counts themselves will not be released (although the“winning” count can be released at no extra privacy cost).
Report Noisy Max. Consider the following simple algorithm to determine which of m counting queries has the highest value: Add independently generated Laplace noise Lap(1/ε) to each count and return theindex of the largest noisy count (we ignore the possibility of a tie). Callthis algorithm Report Noisy Max.
Note the “information minimization” principle at work in theReport Noisy Max algorithm: rather than releasing all the noisy counts
and allowing the analyst to find the max and its index, only theindex corresponding to the maximum is made public. Since the dataof an individual can affect all counts, the vector of counts has high `1 sensitivity, specifically, ∆f = m, and much more noise would be needed
if we wanted to release all of the counts using the Laplace mechanism.
Claim 3.9. The Report Noisy Max algorithm is (ε, 0)-differentiallyprivate.
Proof. Fix D = D0 ∪ {a}. Let c, respectively c0 , denote the vector ofcounts when the database is D, respectively D0 . We use two properties:
1. Monotonicity of Counts. For all j ∈ [m], cj ≥ c0j ; and2. Lipschitz Property. For all j ∈ [m], 1 + c0j ≥ cj .
Fix any i ∈ [m]. We will bound from above and below the ratio of
the probabilities that i is selected with D and with D0 .
Fix r−i , a draw from [Lap(1/ε)]m−1 used for all the noisy counts
except the ith count. We will argue for each r−i independently. We

36

Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems

use the notation Pr[i|ξ] to mean the probability that the output of theReport Noisy Max algorithm is i, conditioned on ξ.
We first argue that Pr[i|D, r−i ] ≤ eε Pr[i|D0 , r−i ]. Definer∗ = min : ci + ri > cj + rj ∀j 6= i.
riNote that, having fixed r−i , i will be the output (the argmax noisy
count) when the database is D if and only if ri ≥ r∗ .
We have, for all 1 ≤ j 6= i ≤ m:ci + r∗ > cj + rj
⇒ (1 + c0i ) + r∗ ≥ ci + r∗ > cj + rj ≥ c0j + rj
⇒ c0i + (r∗ + 1) > c0j + rj .
Thus, if ri ≥ r∗ + 1, then the ith count will be the maximum when the
database is D0 and the noise vector is (ri , r−i ). The probabilities below
are over the choice of ri ∼ Lap(1/ε).
Pr[ri ≥ 1 + r∗ ] ≥ e−ε Pr[ri ≥ r∗ ] = e−ε Pr[i|D, r−i ]⇒ Pr[i|D0 , r−i ] ≥ Pr[ri ≥ 1 + r∗ ] ≥ e−ε Pr[ri ≥ r∗ ] = e−ε Pr[i|D, r−i ],which, after multiplying through by eε , yields what we wanted to show:
Pr[i|D, r−i ] ≤ eε Pr[i|D0 , r−i ].
We now argue that Pr[i|D0 , r−i ] ≤ eε Pr[i|D, r−i ]. Definer∗ = min : c0i + ri > c0j + rj ∀j 6= i.
riNote that, having fixed r−i , i will be the output (argmax noisy count)when the database is D0 if and only if ri ≥ r∗ .
We have, for all 1 ≤ j 6= i ≤ m:
c0i + r∗ > c0j + rj
⇒ 1 + c0i + r∗ > 1 + c0j + rj
⇒ c0i + (r∗ + 1) > (1 + c0j ) + rj
⇒ ci + (r∗ + 1) ≥ c0i + (r∗ + 1) > (1 + c0j ) + rj ≥ cj + rj .
Thus, if ri ≥ r∗ + 1, then i will be the output (the argmax noisy
count) on database D with randomness (ri , r−i ). We therefore have,with probabilities taken over choice of ri :Pr[i|D, r−i ] ≥ Pr[ri ≥ r∗ + 1] ≥ e−ε Pr[ri ≥ r∗ ] = e−ε Pr[i|D0 , r−i ],3.4. The exponential mechanism

37

which, after multiplying through by eε , yields what we wanted to show:
Pr[i|D0 , r−i ] ≤ eε Pr[i|D, r−i ].

3.4

The exponential mechanism

In both the “most common name” and “most common condition” examples the “utility” of a response (name or medical condition, respectively) we estimated counts using Laplace noise and reported the noisy
maximum. In both examples the utility of the response is directly
related to the noise values generated; that is, the popularity of thename or condition is appropriately measured on the same scale and in
the same units as the magnitude of the noise.
The exponential mechanism was designed for situations in which
we wish to choose the “best” response but adding noise directly to thecomputed quantity can completely destroy its value, such as setting a
price in an auction, where the goal is to maximize revenue, and adding asmall amount of positive noise to the optimal price (in order to protect
the privacy of a bid) could dramatically reduce the resulting revenue.
Example 3.5 (Pumpkins.). Suppose we have an abundant supply of
pumpkins and four bidders: A, F, I, K, where A, F, I each bid $1.00
and K bids $3.01. What is the optimal price? At $3.01 the revenue
is $3.01, at $3.00 and at $1.00 the revenue is $3.00, but at $3.02 therevenue is zero!
The exponential mechanism is the natural building block foranswering queries with arbitrary utilities (and arbitrary non-numeric
range), while preserving differential privacy. Given some arbitrary
range R, the exponential mechanism is defined with respect to some
utility function u : N|X | × R → R, which maps database/output pairs
to utility scores. Intuitively, for a fixed database x, the user prefers thatthe mechanism outputs some element of R with the maximum possible
utility score. Note that when we talk about the sensitivity of the utility
score u : N|X | × R → R, we care only about the sensitivity of u withrespect to its database argument; it can be arbitrarily sensitive in its

38

Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems

range argument:∆u ≡ maxmaxr∈R x,y:kx−yk1 ≤1|u(x, r) − u(y, r)|.

The intuition behind the exponential mechanism is to output each possible r ∈ R with probability proportional to exp(εu(x, r)/∆u) and so
the privacy loss is approximately:exp(εu(x, r)/∆u)ln
exp(εu(y, r)/∆u)= ε[u(x, r) − u(y, r)]/∆u) ≤ ε.

This intuitive view overlooks some effects of a normalization term whicharises when an additional person in the database causes the utilities ofsome elements r ∈ R to decrease and others to increase. The actual
mechanism, defined next, reserves half the privacy budget for changes
in the normalization term.
Definition 3.4 (The Exponential Mechanism). The exponential mechanism ME (x, u, R) selects and outputs an element r ∈ R withprobability proportional to exp( εu(x,r)
2∆u ).
The exponential mechanism can define a complex distribution overa large arbitrary domain, and so it may not be possible to implement
the exponential mechanism efficiently when the range of u is superpolynomially large in the natural parameters of the problem.
Returning to the pumpkin example, utility for a price p on databasex is simply the profit obtained when the price is p and the demand curveis as described by x. It is important that the range of potential prices
is independent of the actual bids. Otherwise there would exist a pricewith non-zero weight in one dataset and zero weight in a neighboring
set, violating differential privacy.
Theorem 3.10. The
differential privacy.

exponential

mechanism

preserves(ε, 0)-

Proof. For clarity, we assume the range R of the exponential mechanism is finite, but this is not necessary. As in all differential privacy
proofs, we consider the ratio of the probability that an instantiation

3.4. The exponential mechanism

39of the exponential mechanism outputs some element r ∈ R on two
neighboring databases x ∈ N|X | and y ∈ N|X | (i.e., kx − yk1 ≤ 1).
εu(x,r))2∆u
εu(x,r 0 )
exp(
)
2∆u
r 0 ∈R!

εu(y,r))2∆uεu(y,r 0 )exp( 2∆u )r 0 ∈R!

exp(

Pr[ME (x, u, R) = r]=Pr[ME (y, u, R) = r]

P

exp(

P

=

exp( εu(x,r)
2∆u )exp( εu(y,r)
2∆u )


! P
εu(y,r0 )
exp(
)
0
2∆u

·  Pr ∈R0εu(x,r )r0 ∈R exp( 2∆u )ε(u(x, r0 ) − u(y, r0 ))
= exp
2∆u


P

· P

0

r0 ∈R

)
exp( εu(y,r2∆u )

εu(x,r0 )r0 ∈R exp( 2∆u )

ε
≤ exp
2

 

ε
· exp
2

 






P

r0 ∈R

· P

0

)
exp( εu(x,r2∆u )

εu(x,r0 )r0 ∈R exp( 2∆u )= exp(ε).
Pr[ME (y,u)=r]
Similarly, Pr[M≥ exp(−ε) by symmetry.
E (x,u)=r]

The exponential mechanism can often give strong utility guarantees,
because it discounts outcomes exponentially quickly as their quality
score falls off. For a given database x and a given utility measure u :N|X | × R → R, let OPTu (x) = maxr∈R u(x, r) denote the maximum
utility score of any element r ∈ R with respect to database x. We willbound the probability that the exponential mechanism returns a “good”
element of R, where good will be measured in terms of OPTu (x). The
result is that it will be highly unlikely that the returned element r has
a utility score that is inferior to OPTu (x) by more than an additive
factor of O((∆u/ε) log |R|).
Theorem 3.11. Fixing a database x, let ROPT = {r ∈ R : u(x, r) =OPTu (x)} denote the set of elements in R which attain utility score

40

Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems

OPTu (x). Then:
|R|
2∆u
ln
Pr u(ME (x, u, R)) ≤ OPTu (x) −ε|ROPT |










+t

≤ e−t

Proof.
Pr[u(ME (x, u, R)) ≤ c] ≤|R| exp(εc/2∆u)|ROPT | exp(εOPTu (x)/2∆u)ε(c − OPTu (x))
|R|
exp
.
|ROPT |
2∆u


=



The inequality follows from the observation that each r ∈ Rwith u(x, r) ≤ c has un-normalized probability mass at mostexp(εc/2∆u), and hence the entire set of such “bad” elements r has
total un-normalized probability mass at most |R| exp(εc/2∆u). In
contrast, we know that there exist at least |ROPT | ≥ 1 elementswith u(x, r) = OPTu (x), and hence un-normalized probability massexp(εOPTu (x)/2∆u), and so this is a lower bound on the normalization
term.
The theorem follows from plugging in the appropriate value
for c.
Since we always have |ROPT | ≥ 1, we can more commonly makeuse of the following simple corollary:
Corollary 3.12. Fixing a database x, we have:2∆u
Pr u(ME (x, u, R)) ≤ OPTu (x) −(ln (|R|) + t) ≤ e−tεAs seen in the proofs of Theorem 3.11 and Corollary 3.12, the Exponential Mechanism can be particularly easy to analyze.
Example 3.6 (Best of Two). Consider the simple question of determining which of exactly two medical conditions A and B is more common.
Let the two true counts be 0 for condition A and c > 0 for condition B.
Our notion of utility will be tied to the actual counts, so that conditions
with bigger counts have higher utility and ∆u = 1. Thus, the utilityof A is 0 and the utility of B is c. Using the Exponential Mechanism

3.5. Composition theorems

41

we can immediately apply Corollary 3.12 to see that the probability ofobserving (wrong) outcome A is at most 2e−c(ε/(2∆u)) = 2e−cε/2 .
Analyzing Report Noisy Max appears to be more complicated, as
it requires understanding what happens in the (probability 1/4) casewhen the noise added to the count for A is positive and the noise added
to the count for B is negative.
A function is monotonic in the data set if the addition of an element
to the data set cannot cause the value of the function to decrease.
Counting queries are monotonic; so is the revenue obtained by offering
a fixed price to a collection of buyers.
Consider the Report One-Sided Noisy Arg-Max mechanism, whichadds noise to the utility of each potential output drawn from the onesided exponential distribution with parameter ε/∆u in the case of amonotonic utility, or parameter ε/2∆u for the case of a non-monotonic
utility, and reports the resulting arg-max.
With this algorithm, whose privacy proof is almost identical to thatof Report Noisy Max (but loses a factor of two when the utility is
non-monotonic), we immediately obtain in Example 3.6 above thatoutcome A is exponentially in c(ε/∆u) = cε less likely to be selected
than outcome B.
Theorem 3.13. Report One-Sided Noisy Arg-Max, when run withparameter ε/2∆u is -differentially private.
Remark 3.1. Report noisy max when instantiated with Laplace noiseor exponential noise both have similar guarantees to the exponential
mechanism, but lead to distinct distributions. It turns out that instantiating report noisy max with the Gumbel distribution leads to analgorithm that samples exactly from the exponential mechanism distribution. This fact is folklore in machine learning, and known as the“Gumbel Max Trick”.

3.5

Composition theorems

Now that we have several building blocks for designing differentiallyprivate algorithms, it is important to understand how we can combine

42

Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems

them to design more sophisticated algorithms. In order to use thesetools, we would like that the combination of two differentially private
algorithms be differentially private itself. Indeed, as we will see, this is
the case. Of course the parameters ε and δ will necessarily degrade —consider repeatedly computing the same statistic using the Laplacemechanism, scaled to give ε-differential privacy each time. The averageof the answer given by each instance of the mechanism will eventuallyconverge to the true value of the statistic, and so we cannot avoid thatthe strength of our privacy guarantee will degrade with repeated use.
In this section we give theorems showing how exactly the parameters
ε and δ compose when differentially private subroutines are combined.
Let us first begin with an easy warm up: we will see that theindependent use of an (ε1 , 0)-differentially private algorithm and an(ε2 , 0)-differentially private algorithm, when taken together, is (ε1 +ε2 , 0)-differentially private.
Theorem 3.14. Let M1 : N|X | → R1 be an ε1 -differentially private
algorithm, and let M2 : N|X | → R2 be an ε2 -differentially private
algorithm. Then their combination, defined to be M1,2 : N|X | → R1 ×
R2 by the mapping: M1,2 (x) = (M1 (x), M2 (x)) is ε1 +ε2 -differentiallyprivate.
Proof. Let x, y ∈ N|X | be such that kx − yk1 ≤ 1. Fix any (r1 , r2 ) ∈R1 × R2 . Then:
Pr[M1,2 (x) = (r1 , r2 )]Pr[M1 (x) = r1 ] Pr[M2 (x) = r2 ]=Pr[M1,2 (y) = (r1 , r2 )]Pr[M1 (y) = r1 ] Pr[M2 (y) = r2 ]Pr[M1 (x) = r1 ]Pr[M2 (x) = r1 ]=Pr[M1 (y) = r1 ]Pr[M2 (y) = r1 ]≤ exp(ε1 ) exp(ε2 )= exp(ε1 + ε2 )Pr[M(x)=(r ,r )]1 2
By symmetry, Pr[M1,2≥ exp(−(ε1 + ε2 )).
1,2 (y)=(r1 ,r2 )]The composition theorem can be applied repeatedly to obtain thefollowing corollary:3.5. Composition theorems

43

Corollary 3.15. Let Mi : N|X | → Ri be an (εi , 0)-differentially privateQ
algorithm for i ∈ [k]. Then if M[k] : N|X | → ki=1 Ri is defined to beP
M[k] (x) = (M1 (x), . . . , Mk (x)), then M[k] is ( ki=1 εi , 0)-differentiallyprivate.
A proof of the generalization of this theorem to (ε, δ)-differential
privacy appears in Appendix B:
Theorem 3.16. Let Mi : N|X | → Ri be an (εi , δi )-differentially privateQ
algorithm for i ∈ [k]. Then if M[k] : N|X | → ki=1 Ri is defined toPP
be M[k] (x) = (M1 (x), . . . , Mk (x)), then M[k] is ( ki=1 εi , ki=1 δi )differentially private.
It is a strength of differential privacy that composition is“automatic,” in that the bounds obtained hold without any special
effort by the database curator.
3.5.1

Composition: some technicalities

In the remainder of this section, we will prove a more sophisticatedcomposition theorem. To this end, we will need some definitions andlemmas, rephrasing differential privacy in terms of distance measures
between distributions. In the fractional quantities below, if the denominator is zero, then we define the value of the fraction to be infinite(the numerators will always be positive).
Definition 3.5 (KL-Divergence). The KL-Divergence, or Relative
Entropy, between two random variables Y and Z taking values fromthe same domain is defined to be:
Pr[Y = y]ln.
Pr[Z = y]D(Y kZ) = Ey∼Y

It is known that D(Y kZ) ≥ 0, with equality if and only if Y and
Z are identically distributed. However, D is not symmetric, does notsatisfy the triangle inequality, and can even be infinite, specifically whenSupp(Y ) is not contained in Supp(Z).
Definition 3.6 (Max Divergence). The Max Divergence between two
random variables Y and Z taking values from the same domain is44

Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems

defined to be:
Pr[Y ∈ S].
D∞ (Y kZ) = max
ln
Pr[Z ∈ S]
S⊆Supp(Y )The δ-Approximate Max Divergence between Y and Z is defined to be:δD∞(Y kZ) =

maxS⊆Supp(Y ):Pr[Y ∈S]≥δln

Pr[Y ∈ S] − δ
Pr[Z ∈ S]

Remark 3.2. Note that a mechanism M is
1. ε-differentially private if and only if on every two neighboring databases x and y, D∞ (M(x)kM(y)) ≤ ε andD∞ (M(y)kM(x)) ≤ ε; and is
2. (ε, δ)-differentially private if and only if on every two neighδ (M(x)kM(y)) ≤ ε and D δ (M(y)kboring databases x, y: D∞∞M(x)) ≤ ε.
One other distance measure that will be useful is the statisticaldistance between two random variables Y and Z, defined as
def∆(Y, Z) = max | Pr[Y ∈ S] − Pr[Z ∈ S]|.
S

We say that Y and Z are δ-close if ∆(Y, Z) ≤ δ.
We will use the following reformulations of approximate maxdivergence in terms of exact max-divergence and statistical distance:
Lemma 3.17.
δ (Y kZ) ≤ ε if and only if there exists a random variable Y 0
1. D∞
such that ∆(Y, Y 0 ) ≤ δ and D∞ (Y 0 kZ) ≤ ε.
δ (Y kZ) ≤ ε and D δ (ZkY ) ≤ ε if and only if
2. We have both D∞∞
there exist random variables Y 0 , Z 0 such that ∆(Y, Y 0 ) ≤ δ/(eε +1), ∆(Z, Z 0 ) ≤ δ/(eε + 1), and D∞ (Y 0 kZ 0 ) ≤ ε.

Proof. For Part 1, suppose there exists Y 0 δ-close to Y such that
D∞ (Y kZ) ≤ ε. Then for every S,
Pr[Y ∈ S] ≤ Pr[Y 0 ∈ S] + δ ≤ eε · Pr[Z ∈ S] + δ,
δ (Y kZ) ≤ ε.
and thus D∞

3.5. Composition theorems45

δ (Y kZ) ≤ ε. Let S = {y : Pr[Y = y] >Conversely, suppose that D∞eε · Pr[Z = y]}. ThenX

(Pr[Y = y] − eε · Pr[Z = y]) = Pr[Y ∈ S] − eε · Pr[Z ∈ S] ≤ δ.

y∈S

Moreover, if we let T = {y : Pr[Y = y] < Pr[Z = y]}, then we have
X

(Pr[Z = y] − Pr[Y = y]) =y∈T

X(Pr[Y = y] − Pr[Z = y])

y ∈T
/

≥

X

(Pr[Y = y] − Pr[Z = y])

y∈S

≥

X

(Pr[Y = y] − eε · Pr[Z = y])/y∈S

Thus, we can obtain Y 0 from Y by lowering the probabilities on S andraising the probabilities on T to satisfy:
1. For all y ∈ S, Pr[Y 0 = y] = eε · Pr[Z = y] < Pr[Y = y].
2. For all y ∈ T , Pr[Y = y] ≤ Pr[Y 0 = y] ≤ Pr[Z = y].
3. For all y ∈/ S ∪ T , Pr[Y 0 = y] = Pr[Y = y] ≤ eε · Pr[Z = y].
Then D∞ (Y 0 kZ) ≤ ε by inspection, and∆(Y, Y 0 ) = Pr[Y ∈ S] − Pr[Y 0 ∈ S] = Pr[Y ∈ S] − eε · Pr[Z ∈ S] ≤ δ.
We now prove Part 2. Suppose there exist random variables Y 0
and Z 0 as stated. Then, for every set S,
Pr[Y ∈ S] ≤ Pr[Y 0 ∈ S] +δeε + 1≤ eε · Pr[Z 0 ∈ S] +δeε + 1δ≤ e · Pr[Z ∈ S] + ε
e +1= eε · Pr[Z ∈ S] + δ.
ε





+

δ
eε + 1

δ (Y kZ) ≤ ε, and by symmetry, D δ (ZkY ) ≤ ε.
Thus D∞∞
δ (Y kZ) ≤ ε andConversely, given Y and Z such that D∞
δ (ZkY ) ≤ ε, we proceed similarly to Part 1. However, instead ofD∞
simply decreasing the probability mass of Y on S to obtain Y 0 and46

Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems

eliminate the gap with eε · Z, we also increase the probability mass of
Z on S. Specifically, for every y ∈ S, we’ll take
Pr[Y 0 = y] = eε · Pr[Z 0 = y]eε· (Pr[Y = y] + Pr[Z = y])
1 + eε∈ [eε · Pr[Z = y], Pr[Y = y]].

=This also implies that for y ∈ S, we have:
Pr[Y = y] − Pr[Y 0 = y]
= Pr[Z 0 = y] − Pr[Z = y]Pr[Y = y] − eε · Pr[Z = y],eε + 1and thus
def X

α =

Pr[Y = y] − Pr[Y 0 = y]



y∈S

=

X

Pr[Z 0 = y] − Pr[Z = y]y∈SPr[Y ∈ S] − eε · Pr[Z ∈ S]eε + 1
δ
≤ ε
.
e +1

=

Similarly on the set S 0 = {y : Pr[Z = y] > eε · Pr[Y = y]}, we candecrease the probability mass of Z and increase the probability massof Y by a total of some α0 ≤ δ/(eε + 1) so that for every y ∈ S 0 , wehave Pr[Z 0 = y] = eε · Pr[Y 0 = y].
If α = α0 , then we can take Pr[Z 0 = y] = Pr[Z = y] andPr[Y 0 = y] = Pr[Y = y] for all y ∈/ S ∪ S 0 , giving D∞ (Y kZ) ≤ εand ∆(Y, Y 0 ) = ∆(Z, Z 0 ) = α. If α 6= α0 , say α > α0 , then we need tostill increase the probability mass of Y 0 and decrease the mass of Z 0
by a total of β = α − α0 on points outside of S ∪ S 0 in order to ensurethat the probabilities sum to 1. That is, if we try to take the “massfunctions” Pr[Y 0 = y] and Pr[Z 0 = y] as defined above, then while we
do have the property that for every y, Pr[Y 0 = y] ≤ eε · Pr[Z 0 = y]P
and Pr[Z 0 = y] ≤ eε · Pr[Y 0 = y] we also have y Pr[Y 0 = y] = 1 − β3.5. Composition theorems

47

0
and
y Pr[Z = y] = 1 + β. However, this means that if we let
R = {y : Pr[Y 0 = y] < Pr[Z 0 = y]}, thenP

X

Pr[Z 0 = y] − Pr[Y 0 = y] ≥Pr[Z 0 = y] − Pr[Y 0 = y] = 2β.

X



y

y∈R

So we can increase the probability mass of Y 0 on points in R by a total of
β and decrease the probability mass of Z 0 on points in R by a total of β,while retaining the property that for all y ∈ R, Pr[Y 0 = y] ≤ Pr[Z 0 = y].
The resulting Y 0 and Z 0 have the properties we want: D∞ (Y 0 , Z 0 ) ≤ εand ∆(Y, Y 0 ), ∆(Z, Z 0 ) ≤ α.
Lemma 3.18. Suppose that random variables Y and Z satisfy
D∞ (Y kZ) ≤ ε and D∞ (ZkY ) ≤ ε. Then D(Y kZ) ≤ ε · (eε − 1).
Proof. We know that for any Y and Z it is the case that D(Y kZ) ≥ 0(via the “log-sum inequality”), and so it suffices to bound D(Y kZ) +D(ZkY ). We get:D(Y kZ) ≤ D(Y kZ) + D(ZkY )=XPr[Y = y] · lnyPr[Y = y]Pr[Z = y]+ ln
Pr[Z = y]Pr[Y = y]Pr[Z = y]+ (Pr[Z = y] − Pr[Y = y]) · ln
Pr[Y = y]


≤

X





[0 + |Pr[Z = y] − Pr[Y = y]| · ε]

y

= ε·

X

[max{Pr[Y = y], Pr[Z = y]}y− min{Pr[Y = y], Pr[Z = y]}]≤ ε·X[(eε − 1) · min{Pr[Y = y], Pr[Z = y]}]y≤ ε · (eε − 1).

Lemma 3.19 (Azuma’s Inequality). Let C1 , . . . , Ck be real-valued random variables such that for every i ∈ [k], Pr[|Ci | ≤ α] = 1, and for48

Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems

every (c1 , . . . , ci−1 ) ∈ Supp(C1 , . . . , Ci−1 ), we have
E[Ci |C1 = c1 , . . . , Ci−1 = ci−1 ] ≤ β.
Then for every z > 0, we have
Pr

" k
X

√

#

2

Ci > kβ + z k · α ≤ e−z /2 .

i=1

3.5.2

Advanced composition

In addition to allowing the parameters to degrade more slowly, we
would like our theorem to be able to handle more complicated forms ofcomposition. However, before we begin, we must discuss what exactly
we mean by composition. We would like our definitions to cover thefollowing two interesting scenarios:
1. Repeated use of differentially private algorithms on the same
database. This allows both the repeated use of the samemechanism multiple times, as well as the modular construction ofdifferentially private algorithms from arbitrary private building
blocks.
2. Repeated use of differentially private algorithms on different
databases that may nevertheless contain information relating to
the same individual. This allows us to reason about the cumulative privacy loss of a single individual whose data might bespread across multiple data sets, each of which may be used independently in a differentially private way. Since new databases are
created all the time, and the adversary may actually influence themakeup of these new databases, this is a fundamentally different
problem than repeatedly querying a single, fixed, database.
We want to model composition where the adversary can adaptively
affect the databases being input to future mechanisms, as well as thequeries to those mechanisms. Let F be a family of database accessmechanisms. (For example F could be the set of all ε-differentiallyprivate mechanisms.) For a probabilistic adversary A, we consider two
experiments, Experiment 0 and Experiment 1, defined as follows.

3.5. Composition theorems

49

Experiment b for family F and adversary A:
For i = 1, . . . , k:
1. A outputs two adjacent databases x0i and x1i , a mechanism
Mi ∈ F, and parameters wi .
2. A receives yi ∈R Mi (wi , xi,b ).
We allow the adversary A above to be stateful throughout the experiment, and thus it may choose the databases, mechanisms, and theparameters adaptively depending on the outputs of previous mechanisms. We define A’s view of the experiment to be A’s coin tosses andall of the mechanism outputs (y1 , . . . , yk ). (The xji ’s, Mi ’s, and wi ’s
can all be reconstructed from these.)
For intuition, consider an adversary who always chooses x0i to holdBob’s data and x1i to differ only in that Bob’s data are deleted. Thenexperiment 0 can be thought of as the “real world,” where Bob allows
his data to be used in many data releases, and Experiment 1 as an“ideal world,” where the outcomes of these data releases do not dependon Bob’s data. Our definitions of privacy still require these two experiments to be “close” to each other, in the same way as required by
the definitions of differential privacy. The intuitive guarantee to Bob isthat the adversary “can’t tell”, given the output of all k mechanisms,
whether Bob’s data was ever used.
Definition 3.7. We say that the family F of database access mechanisms satisfies ε-differential privacy under k-fold adaptive composition
if for every adversary A, we have D∞ (V 0 kV 1 ) ≤ ε where V b denotes
the view of A in k-fold Composition Experiment b above.
(ε, δ)-differential privacy under k-fold adaptive composition insteadδ (V 0 kV 1 ) ≤ ε.
requires that D∞
Theorem 3.20 (Advanced Composition). For all ε, δ, δ 0 ≥ 0, the class of(ε, δ)-differentially private mechanisms satisfies (ε0 , kδ + δ 0 )-differential
privacy under k-fold adaptive composition for:ε0 =q

2k ln(1/δ 0 )ε + kε(eε − 1).

50

Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems

Proof. A view of the adversary A consists of a tuple of the form v =(r, y1 , . . . , yk ), where r is the coin tosses of A and y1 , . . . , yk are theoutputs of the mechanisms M1 , . . . , Mk . Let0

B = {v : Pr[V 0 = v] > eε · Pr[V 1 = v]}.
We will show that Pr[V 0 ∈ B] ≤ δ, and hence for every set S, we have
0

Pr[V 0 ∈ S] ≤ Pr[V 0 ∈ B] + Pr[V 0 ∈ (S \ B)] ≤ δ + eε · Pr[V 1 ∈ S].
δ (V 0 kV 1 ) ≤ ε0 .
This is equivalent to saying that D∞
It remains to show Pr[V 0 ∈ B] ≤ δ. Let random variable V 0 =0(R , Y10 , . . . , Yk0 ) denote the view of A in Experiment 0 and V 1 =(R1 , Y11 , . . . , Yk1 ) the view of A in Experiment 1. Then for a fixed viewv = (r, y1 , . . . , yk ), we have

Pr[V 0 = v]
Pr[V 1 = v]

ln

k
0 =y
Pr[Yi0 = yi |R0 = r, Y10 = y1 , . . . , Yi−1
Pr[R0 = r] Y
i−1 ]
·
1
1
1
1
1
Pr[R = r] i=1 Pr[Yi = yi |R = r, Y1 = y1 , . . . , Yi−1 = yi−1 ]

= ln
=
def

=

k
X

!

ln

i=1
k
X

0 =y
Pr[Yi0 = yi |R0 = r, Y10 = y1 , . . . , Yi−1
i−1 ]
1
1
1
1
Pr[Yi = yi |R = r, Y1 = y1 , . . . , Yi−1 = yi−1 ]!

!

ci (r, y1 , . . . , yi ).

i=1

Now for every prefix (r, y1 , . . . , yi−1 ) we condition on R0 = r, Y10 =0y1 , . . . , Yi−1
= yi−1 , and analyze the expectation and maximum
possible value of the random variable ci (R0 , Y10 , . . . , Yi0 ) = ci (r, y1 , . . .,yi−1 , Yi0 ). Once the prefix is fixed, the next pair of databases x0i and
x1i , the mechanism Mi , and parameter wi output by A are also determined (in both Experiment 0 and 1). Thus Yi0 is distributed according
to Mi (wi , x0i ). Moreover for any value yi , we have!

ci (r, y1 , . . . , yi−1 , yi ) = ln

Pr[Mi (wi , x0i ) = yi ].
Pr[Mi (wi , x1i ) = yi ]

3.5. Composition theorems

51

By ε-differential privacy this is bounded by ε. We can also reason as
follows:|ci (r, y1 , . . . , yi−1 , yi )|≤ max{D∞ (Mi (wi , x0i )kMi (wi , x1i )),D∞ (Mi (wi , x1i )kMi (wi , x0i ))}= ε.
By Lemma 3.18, we have:0E[ci (R0 , Y10 , . . . , Yi0 )|R0 = r, Y10 = y1 , . . . , Yi−1
= yi−1 ]= D(Mi (wi , x0i )kMi (wi , x1i ))≤ ε(eε − 1).
Thus we can apply Azuma’s Inequality to the random variables Ci =pci (R0 , Y10 , . . . , Yi0 ) with α = ε, β = ε·ε0 , and z = 2 ln(1/δ), to deducethat"#
Pr[V 0 ∈ B] = Pr

X

2

Ci > ε0 < e−z /2 = δ,ias desired.
To extend the proof to composition of (ε, δ)-differentially private
mechanisms, for δ > 0, we use the characterization of approximate maxdivergence from Lemma 3.17 (Part 2) to reduce the analysis to the same
situation as in the case of (ε, 0)-indistinguishable sequences. Specifically, using Lemma 3.17, Part 2 for each of the differentially private
mechanisms selected by the adversary A and the triangle inequality
for statistical distance, it follows that that V 0 is kδ-close to a randomvariable W = (R, Z1 , . . . , Zk ) such that for every prefix r, y1 , . . . , yi−1 ,1 = y
if we condition on R = R1 = r, Z1 = Y11 = y1 , . . . , Zi−1 = Yi−1
i−1 ,
1
1
then it holds that D∞ (Zi kYi ) ≤ ε and D∞ (Yi kZi ) ≤ ε.
δ 0 (W kV 1 ) ≤ ε0 . Since V 0 is kδ-close toThis suffices to show that D∞
0
W , Lemma 3.17, Part 1 gives Dδ +kδ (V 0 kW ) ≤ ε0 .
An immediate and useful corollary tells us a safe choice of ε for eachof k mechanisms if we wish to ensure (ε0 , kδ + δ 0 )-differential privacy
for a given ε0 , δ 0 .

52

Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems

Corollary 3.21. Given target privacy parameters 0 < ε0 < 1 and δ 0 > 0,
to ensure (ε0 , kδ + δ 0 ) cumulative privacy loss over k mechanisms, itsuffices that each mechanism is (ε, δ)-differentially private, where
ε0
ε= p
.
2 2k ln(1/δ 0 )Proof. Theorem 3.20 tells us the composition will be (ε∗ , kδ + δ 0 ) forpall δ 0 , where ε∗ = 2k ln(1/δ 0 ) · ε + kε2 . When ε0 < 1, we have thatε∗ ≤ ε0 as desired.
Note that the above corollary gives a rough guide for how to set εto get desired privacy parameters under composition. When one cares
about optimizing constants (which one does when dealing with actual
implementations), ε can be set more tightly by appealing directly tothe composition theorem.
Example 3.7. Suppose, over the course of his lifetime, Bob is a member of k = 10, 000 (ε0 , 0)-differentially private databases. Assuming
no coordination among these databases — the administrator of any
given database may not even be aware of the existence of the otherdatabases — what should be the value of ε0 so that, over the courseof his lifetime, Bob’s cumulative privacy loss is bounded by ε = 1 withprobability at least 1 − e−32 ? Theorem 3.20 says that, taking δ 0 = e−32
it suffices to have ε0 ≤ 1/801. This turns out to be essentially optimal against an arbitrary adversary, assuming no coordination among
distinct differentially private databases.
So how many queries can we answer with non-trivial accuracy? On
a database of size n let us say the accuracy is non-trivial if the error
is of order o(n). Theorem 3.20 says that for fixed values of ε and δ,
it is possible to answer close to n2 counting queries with non-trivial
accuracy. Similarly, one can answer close to n queries while still having√
noise o( n) — that is, noise less than the sampling error. We will seethat it is possible to dramatically improve on these results, handling,in some cases, even an exponential number of queries with noise only√
slightly larger than n, by coordinating the noise added to the individual responses. It turns out that such coordination is essential: without

3.5. Composition theorems

53

coordination the bound in the advanced composition theorem is almost
tight.
3.5.3

Laplace versus Gauss

An alternative to adding Laplacian noise is to add Gaussian noise. In
this case, rather than scaling the noise to the `1 sensitivity ∆f , weinstead scale to the `2 sensitivity:
Definition 3.8 (`2 -sensitivity). The `2 -sensitivity of a function f :N|X | → Rk is:∆2 (f ) = max kf (x) − f (y)k2 .
x,y∈N|X |kx−yk1 =1

The Gaussian Mechanism with parameter b adds zero-mean Gaussian noise with variance b in each of the k coordinates. The following
theorem is proved in Appendix A.
Theorem 3.22. Let ε ∈ (0, 1) be arbitrary. For c2 > 2 ln(1.25/δ),the Gaussian Mechanism with parameter σ ≥ c∆2 (f )/ε is (ε, δ)differentially private.
Among the advantages to Gaussian noise is that the noise added for
privacy is of the same type as other sources of noise; moreover, the sumof two Gaussians is a Gaussian, so the effects of the privacy mechanismon the statistical analysis may be easier to understand and correct for.
The two mechanisms yield the same cumulative loss undercomposition, so even though the privacy guarantee is weaker for eachindividual computation, the cumulative effects over many computations
are comparable. Also, if δ is sufficiently (e.g., subpolynomially) small,in practice we will never experience the weakness of the guarantee.
That said, there is a theoretical disadvantage to Gaussian noise,
relative to what we experience with Laplace noise. Consider Report
Noisy Max (with Laplace noise) in a case in which every candidate
output has the same quality score on database x as on its neighbor y.
Independent of the number of candidate outputs, the mechanism yields(ε, 0)-differential privacy. If instead we use Gaussian noise and report
the max, and if the number of candidates is large compared to 1/δ,

54

Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems

then we will exactly select for the events with large Gaussian noise —noise that occurs with probability less than δ. When we are this far
out on the tail of the Gaussian we no longer have a guarantee that theobservation is within an e±ε factor as likely to occur on x as on y.
3.5.4

Remarks on composition

The ability to analyze cumulative privacy loss under composition gives
us a handle on what a world of differentially private databases can offer.
A few observations are in order.
Weak Quantification. Assume that the adversary always chooses x0i
to hold Bob’s data, and x1i to be the same database but with Bob’s datadeleted. Theorem 3.20, with appropriate choise of parameters, tells usthat an adversary — including one that knows or even selects(!) the
database pairs — has little advantage in determining the value of b ∈{0, 1}. This is an inherently weak quantification. We can ensure that theadversary is unlikely to distinguish reality from any given alternative,
but we cannot ensure this simultaneously for all alternatives. If there
are one zillion databases but Bob is a member of only 10,000 of these,then we are not simultaneously protecting Bob’s absence from all zillion
minus ten thousand. This is analogous to the quantification in thedefinition of (ε, δ)-differential privacy, where we fix in advance a pairof adjacent databases and argue that with high probability the output
will be almost equally likely with these two databases.
Humans and Ghosts. Intuitively, an (, 0)-differentially private
database with a small number of bits per record is less protective thana differentially private database with the same choice of  that contains our entire medical histories. So in what sense is our principle
privacy measure, , telling us the same thing about databases that differ radically in the complexity and sensitivity of the data they store?
The answer lies in the composition theorems. Imagine a world inhabited by two types of beings: ghosts and humans. Both types of beings
behave the same, interact with others in the same way, write, study,
work, laugh, love, cry, reproduce, become ill, recover, and age in thesame fashion. The only difference is that ghosts have no records in3.6. The sparse vector technique55

databases, while humans do. The goal of the privacy adversary is todetermine whether a given 50-year old, the “target,” is a ghost or ahuman. Indeed, the adversary is given all 50 years to do so. The adversary does not need to remain passive, for example, she can organize
clinical trials and enroll patients of her choice, she can create humans
to populate databases, effectively creating the worst-case (for privacy)
databases, she can expose the target to chemicals at age 25 and again
at 35, and so on. She can know everything about the target that could
possibly be entered into any database. She can know which databases
the target would be in, were the target human. The composition theorems tell us that the privacy guarantees of each database — regardlessof the data type, complexity, and sensitivity — give comparable protection for the human/ghost bit.

3.6

The sparse vector technique

The Laplace mechanism can be used to answer adaptively chosen low
sensitivity queries, and we know from our composition theorems thatthe privacy parameter degrades proportionally to the number of queries
answered (or its square root). Unfortunately, it will often happen that
we have a very large number of questions to answer — too many to yielda reasonable privacy guarantee using independent perturbation techniques, even with the advanced composition theorems of Section 3.5.
In some situations however, we will only care to know the identity ofthe queries that lie above a certain threshold. In this case, we can hopeto gain over the naïve analysis by discarding the numeric answer toqueries that lie significantly below the threshold, and merely reporting that they do indeed lie below the threshold. (We will be able toget the numeric values of the above-threshold queries as well, at little additional cost, if we so choose). This is similar to what we did in
the Report Noisy Max mechanism in section 3.3, and indeed iterating
either that algorithm or the exponential mechanism would be an option
for the non-interactive, or offline, case.
In this section, we show how to analyze a method for this in the
online setting. The technique is simple — add noise and report only

56

Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems

whether the noisy value exceeds the threshold — and our emphasis ison the analysis, showing that privacy degrades only with the numberof queries which actually lie above the threshold, rather than with thetotal number of queries. This can be a huge savings if we know thatthe set of queries that lie above the threshold is much smaller than the
total number of queries — that is, if the answer vector is sparse.
In a little more detail, we will consider a sequence of events — onefor each query — which occur if a query evaluated on the databaseexceeds a given (known, public) threshold. Our goal will be to release a
bit vector indicating, for each event, whether or not it has occurred. As
each query is presented, the mechanism will compute a noisy response,
compare it to the (publicly known) threshold, and, if the threshold isexceeded, reveal this fact. For technical reasons in the proof of privacy(Theorem 3.24), the algorithm works with a noisy version T̂ of thethreshold T . While T is public the noisy version T̂ is not.
Rather than incurring a privacy loss for each possible query, theanalysis below will result in a privacy cost only for the query values
that are near or above the threshold.
The Setting. Let m denote the total number of sensitivity 1 queries,
which may be chosen adaptively. Without loss of generality, there isa single threshold T fixed in advance (alternatively, each query canhave its own threshold, but the results are unchanged). We will be
adding noise to query values and comparing the results to T . A positive
outcome means that a noisy query value exceeds the threshold. We
expect a small number c of noisy values to exceed the threshold, and weare releasing only the noisy values above the threshold. The algorithm
will use c in its stopping condition.
We will first analyze the case in which the algorithm halts after c =1 above-threshold query, and show that this algorithm is -differentiallyprivate no matter how long the total sequence of queries is. We will thenanalyze the case of c > 1 by using our composition theorems, and derivebounds both for (, 0) and (, δ)-differential privacy.
We first argue that AboveThreshold, the algorithm specialized tothe case of only one above-threshold query, is private and accurate.

3.6. The sparse vector technique

57

Algorithm 1 Input is a private database D, an adaptively chosen
stream of sensitivity 1 queries f1 , . . ., and a threshold T . Output is a
stream of responses a1 , . . .
AboveThreshold(D, {fi }, T, ) 

Let T̂ = T + Lap 2 .
for Each query i do
Let νi = Lap( 4 )if fi (D) + νi ≥ T̂ thenOutput ai = >.
Halt.
else
Output ai = ⊥.
end ifend for

Theorem 3.23. AboveThreshold is (, 0)-differentially private.
Proof. Fix any two neighboring databases D and D0 . Let A denote
the random variable representing the output of AboveThreshold(D, {fi }, T, ) and let A0 denote the random variable representing
the output of AboveThreshold(D0 , {fi }, T, ). The output of the algorithm is some realization of these random variables, a ∈ {>, ⊥}k andhas the form that for all i < k, ai = ⊥ and ak = >. There are two
types of random variables internal to the algorithm: the noisy threshold T̂ and the perturbations to each of the k queries, {νi }ki=1 . For thefollowing analysis, we will fix the (arbitrary) values of ν1 , . . . , νk−1 andtake probabilities over the randomness of νk and T̂ . Define the following quantity representing the maximum noisy value of any query
f1 , . . . , fk−1 evaluated on D:
g(D) = max (fi (D) + νi )i<kIn the following, we will abuse notation and write Pr[T̂ = t] as shorthand for the pdf of T̂ evaluated at t (similarly for νk ), and write 1[x]to denote the indicator function of event x. Note that fixing the values

58

Basic Techniques and Composition Theoremsof ν1 , . . . , νk−1 (which makes g(D) a deterministic quantity), we have:
Pr [A = a] = Pr [T̂ > g(D) and fk (D) + νk ≥ T̂ ]T̂ ,νkT̂ ,νk= Pr [T̂ ∈ (g(D), fk (D) + νk ]]T̂ ,νkZ ∞ Z ∞=−∞ −∞Pr[νk = v]

· Pr[T̂ = t]1[t ∈ (g(D), fk (D) + v]]dvdt.
=∗
We now make a change of variables. Define:v̂ = v + g(D) − g(D0 ) + fk (D0 ) − fk (D)t̂ = t + g(D) − g(D0 )and note that for any D, D0 , |v̂ − v| ≤ 2 and |t̂ − t| ≤ 1. This follows
because each query fi (D) is 1-sensitive, and hence the quantity g(D)is 1-sensitive as well. Applying this change of variables, we have:∗=Z ∞ Z ∞−∞ −∞Pr[νk = v̂] · Pr[T̂ = t̂]1[(t + g(D) − g(D0 ))∈ (g(D), fk (D0 ) + v + g(D) − g(D0 )]]dvdt

Z ∞ Z ∞=≤−∞ −∞Z ∞ Z ∞−∞ −∞Pr[νk = v̂] · Pr[T̂ = t̂]1[(t ∈ (g(D0 ), fk (D0 ) + v]]dvdt
exp(/2) Pr[νk = v]

· exp(/2) Pr[T̂ = t]1[(t ∈ (g(D0 ), fk (D0 ) + v]]dvdt= exp() Pr [T̂ > g(D0 ) and fk (D0 ) + νk ≥ T̂ ]T̂ ,νk= exp() Pr [A0 = a]T̂ ,νkwhere the inequality comes from our bounds on |v̂ − v| and |t̂ − t| andthe form of the pdf of the Laplace distribution.
Definition 3.9 (Accuracy). We will say that an algorithm which outputs
a stream of answers a1 , . . . , ∈ {>, ⊥}∗ in response to a stream of k

3.6. The sparse vector technique59

queries f1 , . . . , fk is (α, β)-accurate with respect to a threshold T if
except with probability at most β, the algorithm does not halt before
fk , and for all ai = >:fi (D) ≥ T − αand for all ai = ⊥:fi (D) ≤ T + α.
What can go wrong in Algorithm 1? The noisy threshold T̂ can bevery far from T , say, |T̂ − T | > α. In addition a small count fi (D) <T − α can have so much noise added to it that it is reported as above
threshold (even when the threshold is close to correct), and a large
count fi (D) > T + α can be reported as below threshold. All of thesehappen with probability exponentially small in α. In summary, we canhave a problem with the choice of the noisy threshold or we can have aproblem with one or more of the individual noise values νi . Of course,
we could have both kinds of errors, so in the analysis below we allocate
α/2 to each type.
Theorem 3.24. For any sequence of k queries f1 , . . . , fk such that|{i < k : fi (D) ≥ T − α}| = 0 (i.e. the only query close to being
above threshold is possibly the last one), AboveThreshold(D, {fi }, T, )is (α, β) accurate for:α=8(log k + log(2/β)).
Proof. Observe that the theorem will be proved if we can show thatexcept with probability at most β:
max |νi | + |T − T̂ | ≤ αi∈[k]If this is the case, then for any ai = >, we have:fi (D) + νi ≥ T̂ ≥ T − |T − T̂ |or in other words:fi (D) ≥ T − |T − T̂ | − |νi | ≥ T − α60

Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems
Similarly, for any ai = ⊥ we have:fi (D) < T̂ ≤ T + |T − T̂ | + |νi | ≤ T + α

We will also have that for any i < k: fi (D) < T − α < T − |νi | − |T − T̂ |,and so: fi (D) + νi ≤ T̂ , meaning ai = ⊥. Therefore the algorithm does
not halt before k queries are answered.
We now complete the proof.
Recall that if Y ∼ Lap(b), then: Pr[|Y | ≥ t · b] = exp(−t). Therefore
we have:ααPr[|T − T̂ | ≥ ] = exp −2
4
Setting this quantity to be at most β/2, we find that we require α ≥4 log(2/β)
Similarly, by a union bound, we have:Pr[max |νi | ≥ α/2] ≤ k · exp −
i∈[k]

α
8



Setting this quantity to be at most β/2, we find that we require α ≥8(log(2/β)+log k)
These two claims combine to prove the theorem.

We now show how to handle multiple “above threshold” queries
using composition.
The Sparse algorithm can be thought of as follows: As queries comein, it makes repeated calls to AboveThreshold. Each time an above
threshold query is reported, the algorithm simply restarts the remaining stream of queries on a new instantiation of AboveThreshold. It
halts after it has restarted AboveThreshold c times (i.e. after c above
threshold queries have appeared). Each instantiation of AboveThreshold is (, 0)-private, and so the composition theorems apply.
Theorem 3.25. Sparse is (, δ)-differentially private.
Proof. We observe that Sparse is exactly equivalent to the following
procedure: We run AboveThreshold(D, {fi }, T, 0 ) on our stream ofqueries {fi } setting

 ,
c
0 =

 p

If δ = 0;,
Otherwise.
1

8c ln δ

3.6. The sparse vector technique

61

Algorithm 2 Input is a private database D, an adaptively chosen
stream of sensitivity 1 queries f1 , . . ., a threshold T , and a cutoff pointc. Output is a stream of answers a1 , . . .
Sparse(D, {fi }, T, c, , δ)
If δ = 0 Let σ = 2c
 . Else Let σ =p

32c ln 1δ


Let T̂0 = T + Lap(σ)
Let count = 0
for Each query i do
Let νi = Lap(2σ)
if fi (D) + νi ≥ T̂count thenOutput ai = >.
Let count = count +1.
Let T̂count = T + Lap(σ)
elseOutput ai = ⊥.
end ifif count ≥ c thenHalt.
end ifend forusing the answers supplied by AboveThreshold. When AboveThreshold halts (after 1 above threshold query), we simply restart
Sparse(D, {fi }, T, 0 ) on the remaining stream, and continue in thismanner until we have restarted AboveThreshold c times. After thec’th restart of AboveThreshold halts, we halt as well. We have alreadyproven that AboveThreshold(D, {fi }, T, 0 ) is (0 , 0) differentially private. Finally, by the advanced composition theorem (Theorem 3.20), c
applications of an 0 = p  1 -differentially private algorithm is (, δ)8c ln δdifferentially private, and c applications of an 0 = /c differentiallyprivate algorithm is (, 0)-private as desired.
It remains to prove accuracy for Sparse, by again observing thatSparse consists only of c calls to AboveThreshold. We note that if each62

Basic Techniques and Composition Theoremsof these calls to AboveThreshold is (α, β/c)-accurate, then Sparse willbe (α, β)-accurate.
Theorem 3.26. For any sequence of k queries f1 , . . . , fk such that
L(T ) ≡ |{i : fi (D) ≥ T − α}| ≤ c, if δ > 0, Sparse is (α, β) accurate for:q
512c ln 1δ
(ln k + ln 2c
)
β
α=
.

If δ = 0, Sparse is (α, β) accurate for:α=8c(ln k + ln(2c/β))

Proof. We simply apply Theorem 3.24 setting β to be β/c, and  to bep  1 and /c, depending on whether δ > 0 or δ = 0, respectively.
8c ln δFinally, we give a version of Sparse that actually outputs thenumeric values of the above threshold queries, which we can do with
only a constant factor loss in accuracy. We call this algorithm NumericSparse, and it is simply a composition of Sparse with the Laplacemechanism. Rather than outputting a vector a ∈ {>, ⊥}∗ , it outputs avector a ∈ (R ∪ {⊥})∗ .
We observe that NumericSparse is private:
Theorem 3.27. NumericSparse is (, δ)-differentially private.
Proof. Observe that if δ = 0, NumericSparse(D, {fi }, T, c, , 0) is simply the adaptive composition of Sparse(D, {fi }, T, c, 89 , 0), together
with the Laplace mechanism with privacy parameters (0 , δ) = ( 91 , 0).
If δ > 0, then NumericSparse(D,{fi }, T, c, , 0) is the composition√
512of Sparse(D, {fi }, T, c, √512+1 , δ/2) together with the Laplace mecha1
nism with privacy parameters (0 , δ) = ( √512+1
, δ/2). Hence the privacy of NumericSparse follows from simple composition.

To discuss accuracy, we must define what we mean by the accuracyof a mechanism that outputs a stream a ∈ (R ∪ {⊥})∗ in response to asequence of numeric valued queries:3.6. The sparse vector technique

63

Algorithm 3 Input is a private database D, an adaptively chosen
stream of sensitivity 1 queries f1 , . . ., a threshold T , and a cutoff pointc. Output is a stream of answers a1 , . . .
NumericSparse(D, {fi }, T, c, , δ)√

512
2
If δ = 0 Let 1 ← 89 , 2 ← 29 . Else Let 1 = √512+1
, 2 = √512+1

If δ = 0 Let σ() = 2c
 . Else Let σ() =p

32c ln 2δ


Let T̂0 = T + Lap(σ(1 ))Let count = 0
for Each query i do
Let νi = Lap(2σ(1 ))if fi (D) + νi ≥ T̂count thenLet υi ← Lap(σ(2 ))Output ai = fi (D) + υi .
Let count = count +1.
Let T̂count = T + Lap(σ(1 ))else
Output ai = ⊥.
end ifif count ≥ c thenHalt.
end ifend forDefinition 3.10 (Numeric Accuracy). We will say that an algorithm
which outputs a stream of answers a1 , . . . , ∈ (R ∪ {⊥})∗ in response
to a stream of k queries f1 , . . . , fk is (α, β)-accurate with respect to a
threshold T if except with probability at most β, the algorithm does
not halt before fk , and for all ai ∈ R:
|fi (D) − ai | ≤ α
and for all ai = ⊥:fi (D) ≤ T + α.
Theorem 3.28. For any sequence of k queries f1 , . . . , fk such that
L(T ) ≡ |{i : fi (D) ≥ T − α}| ≤ c, if δ > 0, NumericSparse is (α, β)64Basic Techniques and Composition Theorems

accurate for:
α=

q
√
2
(ln k + ln 4c)cln(
512 + 1)βδ.

If δ = 0, Sparse is (α, β) accurate for:α=9c(ln k + ln(4c/β))

Proof. Accuracy requires two conditions: first, that for all ai = ⊥:fi (D) ≤ T + α. This holds with probability 1 − β/2 by the accuracy
theorem for Sparse. Next, for all ai ∈ R, it requires |fi (D) − ai | ≤ α.
This holds for with probability 1 − β/2 by the accuracy of the Laplacemechanism.
What did we show in the end? If we are given a sequence of queries
together with a guarantee that only at most c of them have answers
above T −α, we can answer those queries that are above a given threshold T , up to error α. This accuracy is equal, up to constants and a factorof log k, to the accuracy we would get, given the same privacy guarantee, if we knew the identities of these large above-threshold queriesahead of time, and answered them with the Laplace mechanism. Thatis, the sparse vector technique allowed us to fish out the identities ofthese large queries almost “for free”, paying only logarithmically for theirrelevant queries. This is the same guarantee that we could have gotten by trying to find the large queries with the exponential mechanism
and then answering them with the Laplace mechanism. This algorithm,
however, is trivial to run, and crucially, allows us to choose our queries
adaptively.

3.7

Bibliographic notes

Randomized Response is due to Warner [84] (predating differential
privacy by four decades!). The Laplace mechanism is due to Dwork
et al. [23]. The exponential mechanism was invented by McSherry and
Talwar [60]. Theorem 3.16 (simple composition) was claimed in [21];the proof appearing in Appendix B is due to Dwork and Lei [22];3.7. Bibliographic notes

65

McSherry and Mironov obtained a similar proof. The material in Sections 3.5.1 and 3.5.2 is taken almost verbatim from Dwork et al. [32].
Prior to [32] composition was modeled informally, much as we did forthe simple composition bounds. For specific mechanisms applied on asingle database, there are “evolution of confidence” arguments due toDinur, Dwork, and Nissim [18, 31], (which pre-date the definition ofdifferential privacy) showing that the√privacy parameter in k-fold composition need only deteriorate like k if we are willing to tolerate a(negligible) loss in δ (for k < 1/ε2 ). Theorem 3.20 generalizes thosearguments to arbitrary differentially private mechanisms,
The claim that without coordination in the noise the bounds inthe composition theorems are almost tight is due to Dwork, Naor, andVadhan [29]. The sparse vector technique is an abstraction of a technique that was introduced, by Dwork, Naor, Reingold, Rothblum, andVadhan [28] (indicator vectors in the proof of Lemma 4.4). It has subsequently found wide use (e.g. by Roth and Roughgarden [74], Dwork,
Naor, Pitassi, and Rothblum [26], and Hardt and Rothblum [44]). In
our presentation of the technique, the proof of Theorem 3.23 is due toSalil Vadhan.

4
Releasing Linear Queries with Correlated Error

One of the most fundamental primitives in private data analysis is
the ability to answer numeric valued queries on a dataset. In the lastsection, we began to see tools that would allow us to do this by adding
independently drawn noise to the query answers. In this section, we
continue this study, and see that by instead adding carefully correlated
noise, we can gain the ability to privately answer vastly more queries
to high accuracy. Here, we see two specific mechanisms for solving thisproblem, which we will generalize in the next section.
In this section, we consider algorithms for solving the query releaseproblem with better accuracy than we would get by simply using compositions of the Laplace mechanism. The improvements are possible
because the set of queries is handled as a whole — even in the online
setting! — permitting the noise on individual queries to be correlated.
To immediately see that something along these lines might be possible, consider the pair of queries in the differencing attack describedin Section 1: “How many people in the database have the sickle cell
trait?” and “How many people, not named X, in the database have thesickle cell trait?” Suppose a mechanism answers the first question using
the Laplace mechanism and then, when the second question is posed,66

67
responds “You already know the approximate answer, because you justasked me almost the exact same question.” This coordinated responseto the pair of questions incurs no more privacy loss than either question would do taken in isolation, so a (small) privacy savings has beenachieved.
The query release problem is quite natural: given a class of queries
Q over the database, we wish to release some answer ai for each queryfi ∈ Q such that the error maxi |ai − fi (x)| is as low as possible, whilestill preserving differential privacy.1 Recall that for any family of low
sensitivity queries, we can apply the Laplace mechanism, which adds
fresh, independent, noise to the answer to each query. Unfortunately,
at a fixed privacy level, for (, 0)-privacy guarantees, the magnitude of
the noise that we must add with the Laplace mechanism scales with |Q|
because this is the rate at which the sensitivity of the combined queries
may grow. Similarly, for (, δ)-privacy guarantees, the noise scales withp
|Q| ln(1/δ). For example, suppose that our class of queries Q consists
only of many copies of the same query: fi = f ∗ for all i. If we use
the Laplace mechanism to release the answers, it will add independent
noise, and so each ai will be an independent random variable with meanf ∗ (x). Clearly, in this regime, the noise rate must grow with |Q| sinceotherwise the average of the ai will converge to the true value f ∗ (x),which would be a privacy violation. However, in this case, because
fi = f ∗ for all i, it would make more sense to approximate f ∗ only oncewith a∗ ≈ f ∗ (x) and release ai = a∗ for all i. In this case, the noise ratewould not have to scale with |Q| at all. In this section, we aim to design
algorithms that are much more accurate than the Laplace mechanism(with error that scales with log |Q|) by adding non-independent noise
as a function of the set of queries.
Recall that our universe is X = {χ1 , χ2 , . . . , χ|X | } and thatdatabases are represented by histograms in N|X | . A linear query is simply a counting query, but generalized to take values in the interval [0, 1]
rather than only boolean values. Specifically, a linear query f takes the1

It is the privacy constraint that makes the problem interesting. Without thisconstraint, the query release problem is trivially and optimally solved by just outputting exact answers for every query.

68

Releasing Linear Queries with Correlated Error

form f : X → [0, 1], and applied to a database x returns either thesum or average value of the query on the database (we will think ofboth, depending on which is more convenient for the analysis). When
we think of linear queries as returning average values, we will refer tothem as normalized linear queries, and say that they take value:|X |f (x) =

1 X
xi · f (χi ).
kxk1 i=1

When we think of linear queries as returning sum values we will referto them as un-normalized linear queries, and say that they take value:f (x) =|X |X

xi · f (χi ).

i=1

Whenever we state a bound, it should be clear from context whether weare speaking of normalized or un-normalized queries, because they takevalues in very different ranges. Note that normalized linear queries takevalues in [0, 1], whereas un-normalized queries take values in [0, kxk1 ].
Note that with this definition linear queries have sensitivity ∆f ≤ 1.
Later sections will discuss arbitrary low-sensitivity queries.
We will present two techniques, one each for the offline and online
cases. Surprisingly, and wonderfully, the offline technique is an immediate application of the exponential mechanism using well-known sampling bounds from learning theory! The algorithm will simply be to
apply the exponential mechanism with range equal to the set of all
small databases y and quality function u(x, y) equal to minus the maximum approximation error incurred by querying y to obtain an approximation for f (x):u(x, y) = − max |f (x) − f (y)|.
f ∈Q

(4.1)

Sampling bounds (see Lemma 4.3 below) tell us that a random subset of
ln |Q|/α2 elements of x will very likely give us a good approximation for
all f (x) (specifically, with additive error bounded by α), so we know it
is sufficient to restrict the set of possible outputs to small databases. We
don’t actually care that the potential output databases are small, onlythat they are not too numerous: their number plays a role in the proof of

69
utility, which is an immediate application of the utility theorem for the
exponential mechanism (Theorem 3.11). More specifically, if the total
number of potential outputs is not too numerous then, in particular, thetotal number of low-utility outputs is not too numerous, and therefore
the ratio of bad outputs to good outputs (there is at least one) is not
too large.
The online mechanism, which, despite not knowing the entire set of
queries in advance, will achieve the same accuracy as the offline mechanism, and will be a direct application of the sparse vector technique. As
a result, privacy will be immediate, but utility will require a proof. The
key will be to argue that, even for a very large set of counting queries,
few queries are “significant”; that is, significant queries will be sparse.
As with the sparse vector algorithms, we can scale noise according to
the number of significant queries, with little dependence on the total
number of queries.
Before we go on and present the mechanisms, we will give just one
example of a useful class of linear queries.
Example 4.1. Suppose that elements of the database are represented
by d boolean features. For example, the first feature may represent
whether or not the individual is male or female, the second feature may
represent whether or not they are a college graduate, the third feature
may represent whether or not they are US citizens, etc. That is, ourdata universe is X = {0, 1}d . Given a subset of these attributes S ⊆{1, . . . , d}, we might like to know how many people in the dataset havethese attributes. (e.g., “What fraction of the dataset consists of malecollege graduates with a family history of lung cancer?”). This naturally
defines a query called a monotone conjunction query, parameterized byQ
a subset of attributes S and defined as fS (z) = i∈S zi , for z ∈ X .
The class of all such queries is simply Q = {fS : S ⊆ {1, . . . , d}}, andhas size |Q| = 2d . A collection of answers to conjunctions is sometimes
called a contingency or marginal table, and is a common method of
releasing statistical information about a dataset. Often times, we may
not be interested in the answers to all conjunctions, but rather justthose that ask about subsets of features S of size |S| = k for some fixedk. This class of queries Qk = {fS : S ⊆ {1, . . . , d}, |S| = k} has size kd .

70

Releasing Linear Queries with Correlated Error

This large and useful class of queries is just one example of the sortsof queries that can be accurately answered by the algorithms givenin this section. (Note that if we wish to also allow (non-monotone)
conjunctions which ask about negated attributes, we can do that aswell — simply double the feature space from d to 2d, and set zd+i =1 − zi for all i ∈ {1, . . . , d}.)4.1

An offline algorithm: SmallDB

In this section, we give an algorithm based on the idea of sampling asmall database using the exponential mechanism. What we will show
is that, for counting queries, it suffices to consider databases that aresmall: their size will only be a function of the query class, and ourdesired approximation accuracy α, and crucially not on kxk1 , the sizeof the private database. This is important because it will allow us tosimultaneously guarantee, for all sufficiently large databases, that there
is at least one database in the range of the exponential mechanism thatwell approximates x on queries in Q, and that there are not too many
databases in the range to dissipate the probability mass placed on this“good” database.
Algorithm 4 The Small Database Mechanism
SmallDB(x, Q, ε, α)Let R ← {y ∈ N|X | : kyk1 = logα|Q|
2 }|X|
Let u : N × R → R be defined to be:u(x, y) = − max |f (x) − f (y)|f ∈QSample And Output y ∈ R with the exponential mechanism
ME (x, u, R)We first observe that the Small Database mechanism preserves
ε-differential privacy.
Proposition 4.1. The Small Database mechanism is (ε, 0) differentiallyprivate.

4.1. An offline algorithm: SmallDB

71

Proof. The Small Database mechanism is simply an instantiation of the
exponential mechanism. Therefore, privacy follows from Theorem 3.10.

We may similarly call on our analysis of the exponential mechanism
to understand the utility guarantees of the Small Database mechanism.
But first, we must justify our choice of range R = {y ∈ N|X | : kyk1 =log |Q|}, the set of all databases of size log |Q|/α2 .
α2Theorem 4.2. For any finite class of linear queries Q, if R = {y ∈|X | , there exists a y ∈ R such
N|X | : kyk1 = logα|Q|2 } then for all x ∈ N
that:max |f (x) − f (y)| ≤ αf ∈QIn other words, we will show that for any collection of linear queries
Q and for any database x, there is a “small” database y of size kyk1 =log |Q|
that approximately encodes the answers to every query in Q, up
α2
to error α.
Lemma 4.3 (Sampling Bounds). For any x ∈ N|X | and for any collectionof linear queries Q, there exists a database y of size
kyk1 =

log |Q|
α2such that:max |f (x) − f (y)| ≤ αf ∈QProof. Let m = logα|Q|
2 . We will construct a database y by taking muniformly random samples from the elements of x. Specifically, for i ∈{1, . . . , m}, let Xi be a random variable taking value χj ∈ X withprobability xj /kxk1 , and let y be the database containing elements
X1 , . . . , Xm . Now fix any f ∈ Q and consider the quantity f (y). We
have:
|X |

m
1 X
1 X
f (y) =
yi · f (χi ) =f (Xi ).
kyk1 i=1
m i=1

72

Releasing Linear Queries with Correlated Error

We note that each term f (Xi ) of the sum is a bounded random variabletaking values 0 ≤ f (Xi ) ≤ 1 with expectation
E[f (Xi )] =

|X |
X
xj
j=1

kxk1

f (χj ) = f (x) ,and that the expectation of f (y) is:m
1 X
E[f (y)] =E[f (Xi )] = f (x) .
m i=1Therefore, we can apply the Chernoff bound stated in Theorem 3.1
which gives:
2
Pr [|f (y) − f (x)| > α] ≤ 2e−2mα .
Taking a union bound over all of the linear queries f ∈ Q, we get:2

Pr max |f (y) − f (x)| > α ≤ 2|Q|e−2mα .
f ∈Qmakes the right hand side smaller than 1 (soPlugging in m = logα|Q|
2long as |Q| > 2), proving that there exists a database of size m satisfying the stated bound, which completes the proof of the lemma.
The proof of Theorem 4.2 simply follows from the observation that
R contains all databases of size logα|Q|
2 .
Proposition 4.4. Let Q be any class of linear queries. Let y be thedatabase output by SmallDB(x, Q, ε, α). Then with probability 1 − β:2max |f (x) − f (y)| ≤ α +f ∈Qlog |X | log |Q|
+ log
α2

 
1
β

εkxk1

.

Proof. Applying the utility bounds for the exponential mechanism
1(Theorem 3.11) with ∆u = kxk
and OPTq (D) ≤ α (which follows
1from Theorem 4.2), we find:2(log (|R|) + t) ≤ e−t .
εkxk1
Pr max |f (x) − f (y)| ≥ α +f ∈Q

We complete the proof by (1) noting that R, which is the set of all2
log |Q|/α2 anddatabases of size at most  log |Q|/α , satisfies |R| ≤ |X |(2) by setting t = log β1 .

4.1. An offline algorithm: SmallDB

73

Finally, we may now state the utility theorem for SmallDB.
Theorem 4.5. By the appropriate choice of α, letting y be the database
output by SmallDB(x, Q, ε, α2 ), we can ensure that with probability
1 − β:


16 log |X | log |Q| + 4 log

max |f (x) − f (y)| ≤   1/3
1
β



εkxk1

f ∈Q

.

(4.2)

Equivalently, for any database x with
16 log |X | log |Q| + 4 log
kxk1 ≥

 
1
β

(4.3)

εα3

with probability 1 − β: maxf ∈Q |f (x) − f (y)| ≤ α.
Proof. By Theorem 4.2, we get:αmax |f (x) − f (y)| ≤ +
f ∈Q
2

2



4 log |X | log |Q|
+ log
α2

εkxk1

 
1
β

.

Setting this quantity to be at most α and solving for kxk1 yields (4.3).
Solving for α yields (4.4).
Note that this theorem states that for fixed α and ε, even with
δ = 0, it is possible to answer almost exponentially many queries in thesize of the database.2 This is in contrast to the Laplace mechanism,
when we use it directly to answer linear queries, which can only answer
linearly many.
Note also that in this discussion, it has been most convenient tothink about normalized queries. However, we can get the corresponding
bounds for unnormalized queries simply by multiplying by kxk1 :Theorem 4.6 (Accuracy theorem for un-normalized queries). By theappropriate choice of α, letting y be the database output by
2

Specifically, solving for k we find that the mechanism can answer k queries for: k ≤ exp O

α3 kxk1
log |X |


.

74

Releasing Linear Queries with Correlated Error

SmallDB(x, Q, ε, α2 ), we can ensure that with probability 1 − β:2/3
max |f (x) − f (y)| ≤ kxk1 f ∈Q

16 log |X | log |Q| + 4 logε  1/31β. (4.4)More Refined Bounds. We proved that every set of linear queries
2
Q has a collection of databases of size at most |X |log |Q|/α that wellapproximates every database x with respect to Q with error at most α.
This is often an over-estimate however, since it completely ignores the
structure of the queries. For example, if Q simply contains the same
query repeated over and over again, each time in a different guise,then there is no reason that the size of the range of the exponential mechanism should grow with |Q|. Similarly, there may even beclasses of queries Q that have infinite cardinality, but nevertheless arewell approximated by small databases. For example, queries that correspond to asking whether a point lies within a given interval on the realline form an infinitely large class Q, since there are uncountably many
intervals on the real line. Nevertheless, this class of queries exhibits
very simple structure that causes it to be well approximated by small
databases. By considering more refined structure of our query classes,
we will be able to give bounds for differentially private mechanisms
which improve over the simple sampling bounds (Lemma 4.3) and canbe non-trivial even for doubly exponentially large classes of queries.3
We will not fully develop these bounds here, but will instead state
several results for the simpler class of counting queries. Recall that acounting query f : X → {0, 1} maps database points to boolean values,
rather than any value in the interval [0, 1] as linear queries do.
Definition 4.1 (Shattering). A class of counting queries Q shatters acollection of points S ⊆ X if for every T ⊆ S, there exists an f ∈ Q suchthat {x ∈ S : f (x) = 1} = T . That is, Q shatters S if for every one of
the 2|S| subsets T of S, there is some function in Q that labels exactly3

In fact, our complexity measure for a class of queries can be finite even for
infinite classes of queries, but here we are dealing with queries over a finite universe,
so there do not exist infinitely many distinct queries.

4.1. An offline algorithm: SmallDB

75

those elements as positive, and does not label any of the elements in
S \ T as positive.
Note that for Q to shatter S it must be the case that |Q| ≥ 2|S|
since Q must contain a function f for each subset T ⊆ S. We can now
define our complexity measure for counting queries.
Definition 4.2 (Vapnik–Chervonenkis (VC) Dimension). A collection ofcounting queries Q has VC-dimension d if there exists some set S ⊆ X
of cardinality |S| = d such that Q shatters S, and Q does not shatter
any set of cardinality d+1. We can denote this quantity by VC-DIM(Q).
Consider again the class of 1-dimensional intervals on the range[0, ∞] defined over the domain X = R. The function fa,b corresponding
to the interval [a, b] is defined such that fa,b (x) = 1 if and only if
x ∈ [a, b]. This is an infinite class of queries, but its VC-dimension
is 2. For any pair of distinct points x < y, there is an interval that
contains neither point (a, b < x), an interval that contains both points(a < x < y < b), and an interval that contains each of the points but
not the other (a < x < b < y and x < a < y < b). However, forany 3 distinct points x < y < z, there is no interval [a, b] such that
fa,b [x] = fa,b [z] = 1 but fa,b [y] = 0.
We observe that the VC-dimension of a finite concept class cannever be too large.
Lemma 4.7. For any finite class Q, VC-DIM(Q) ≤ log |Q|.
Proof. If VC-DIM(Q) = d then Q shatters some set of items S ⊆ X ofcardinality |S| = d. But by the definition of shattering, since S has 2d
distinct subsets, Q must have at least 2d distinct functions in it.
It will turn out that we can essentially replace the term log |Q|
with the term VC-DIM(Q) in our bounds for the SmallDB mechanism.
By the previous lemma, this is can only be an improvement for finiteclasses Q.
Theorem 4.8. For any finiteclass of linear queries Q, if R = {y ∈
VC-DIM(Q)|X|
N : kyk ∈ O} then for all x ∈ N|X | , there exists a y ∈ R
α2such that:max |f (x) − f (y)| ≤ α
f ∈Q

76

Releasing Linear Queries with Correlated Error

As a result of this theorem, we get the analogue of Theorem 4.5
with VC-dimension as our measure of query class complexity:
Theorem 4.9. Let y be the database output by SmallDB(x, Q, ε, α2 ).
Then with probability 1 − β:  1/3 
1log|X|VC-DIM(Q)
+
log
β

 
max |f (x) − f (y)| ≤ O 


εkxk1

f ∈Q

Equivalently, for any database x with

kxk1 ≥ O 

log |X |VC-DIM(Q) + log
εα3

 
1
β



with probability 1 − β: maxf ∈Q |f (x) − f (y)| ≤ α.
An analogous (although more cumbersome) measure of query complexity, the “Fat Shattering Dimension,” defines the complexity of aclass of linear queries, as opposed to simply counting queries. The Fat
Shattering Dimension controls the size of the smallest “α-net” (Definition 5.2 in Section 5) for a class of linear queries Q as VC-dimension
does for counting queries. This measure can similarly be used to give
more refined bounds for mechanisms designed to privately release linear
queries.

4.2

An online mechanism: private multiplicative weights

We will now give a mechanism for answering queries that arrive online
and may be interactively chosen. The algorithm will be a simple combination of the sparse vector algorithm (which can answer thresholdqueries adaptively), and the exponentiated gradient descent algorithm
for learning linear predictors online.
This latter algorithm is also known as Hedge or more generally themultiplicative weights technique. The idea is the following: When weview the database D ∈ N|X | as a histogram and are interested only
in linear queries (i.e., linear functions of this histogram), then we canview the problem of answering linear queries as the problem of learning the linear function D that defines the query answers hD, qi, given4.2. An online mechanism: private multiplicative weights

77

a query q ∈ [0, 1]|X | . If the learning algorithm only needs to accessthe data using privacy-preserving queries, then rather than having a
privacy cost that grows with the number of queries we would like toanswer, we can have a privacy cost that grows only with the numberof queries the learning algorithm needs to make. The “multiplicative
weights” algorithm which we present next is a classical example of sucha learning algorithm: it can learn any linear predictor by making onlya small number of queries. It maintains at all times a current “hypothesis predictor,” and accesses the data only by requiring examples ofqueries on which its hypothesis predictor differs from the (true) private
database by a large amount. Its guarantee is that it will always learn
the target linear function up to small error, given only a small numberof such examples. How can we find these examples? The sparse vector
algorithm that we saw in the previous section allows us to do this on
the fly, while paying for only those examples that have high error on
the current multiplicative weights hypothesis. As queries come in, we
ask whether the true answer to the query differs substantially from theanswer to the query on the current multiplicative weights hypothesis.
Note that this is a threshold query of the type handled by the sparse
vector technique. If the answer is “no” — i.e., the difference, or error, is“below threshold,” — then we can respond to the query using the publicly known hypothesis predictor, and have no further privacy loss. If theanswer is “yes,” meaning that the currently known hypothesis predictor
gives rise to an error that is above threshold, then we have found an
example appropriate to update our learning algorithm. Because “above
threshold” answers correspond exactly to queries needed to update ourlearning algorithm, the total privacy cost depends only on the learning
rate of the algorithm, and not on the total number of queries that we
answer.
First we give the multiplicative weights update rule and prove a theorem about its convergence in the language of answering linear queries.
It will be convenient to think of databases x as being probability distributions over the data universe X . That is, letting ∆([X ]) denote theset of probability distributions over the set [|X |], we have x ∈ ∆([X ]).

78

Releasing Linear Queries with Correlated Error

Note that we can always scale a database to have this property withoutchanging the normalized value of any linear query.
Algorithm 5 The Multiplicative Weights (MW) Update Rule. It is
instantiated with a parameter η ≤ 1. In the following analysis, we willtake η = α/2, where α is the parameter specifying our target accuracy.
MW(xt , ft , vt ):if vt < ft (xt ) thenLet rt = ftelse
Let rt = 1 − ft
(i.e., for all χi , rt (χi ) = 1 − ft [χi ])end ifUpdate: For all i ∈ [|X |] Letx̂t+1= exp(−ηrt [i]) · xti
ix̂t+1= P|X i|xt+1
it+1
j=1 x̂j
Output xt+1 .
Theorem 4.10. Fix a class of linear queries Q and a database x ∈∆([X ]), and let x1 ∈ ∆([X ]) describe the uniform distribution overX : x1i = 1/|X | for all i. Now consider a maximal length sequenceof databases xt for t ∈ {2, . . . , L} generated by setting xt+1 =MW (xt , ft , vt ) as described in Algorithm 5, where for each t, ft ∈ Q
and vt ∈ R are such that:
1. |ft (x) − ft (xt )| > α, and
2. |ft (x) − vt | < α.
Then it must be that:
4 log |X |.
α2Note that if we prove this theorem, we will have proven that for
the last database xL+1 in the sequence it must be that for all f ∈ Q:
L≤1+

4.2. An online mechanism: private multiplicative weights

79|f (x) − f (xL+1 )| ≤ α, as otherwise it would be possible to extend
the sequence, contradicting maximality. In other words, given distinguishing queries f t , the multiplicative weights update rule learns theprivate database x with respect to any class of linear queries Q, up
to some tolerance α, in only a small number (L) of steps. We will
use this theorem as follows. The Private Online Multiplicative Weights
algorithm, described (twice!) below, will at all times t have a public approximation xt to the database x. Given an input query f ,the algorithm will compute a noisy approximation to the difference|f (x) − f (xt )|. If the (noisy) difference is large, the algorithm will provide a noisy approximation f (x) + λt to the true answer f (x), where λt
is drawn from some appropriately chosen Laplace distribution, and theMultiplicative Weights Update Rule will be invoked with parameters(xt , f, f (x) + λt ). If the update rule is invoked only when the difference|f (x) − f (xt )| is truly large (Theorem 4.10, condition 1), and if theapproximations f (x) + λt are sufficiently accurate (Theorem 4.10, condition 2), then we can apply the theorem to conclude that updates are
not so numerous (because L is not so large) and the resulting xL+1 gives
accurate answers to all queries in Q (because no distinguishing query
remains).
Theorem 4.10 is proved by keeping track of a potential function Ψ
measuring the similarity between the hypothesis database xt at time t,
and the true database D. We will show:
1. The potential function does not start out too large.
2. The potential function decreases by a significant amount at each
update round.
3. The potential function is always non-negative.
Together, these 3 facts will force us to conclude that there cannot be
too many update rounds.
Let us now begin the analysis for the proof of the convergence
theorem.
Proof. We must show that any sequence {(xt , ft , vt )}t=1,...,L with theproperty that |ft (xt ) − ft (x)| > α and |vt − ft (x)| < α cannot have|X |L > 4 log
.
α2

80

Releasing Linear Queries with Correlated Error

We define our potential function as follows. Recall that we here viewthe database as a probability distribution — i.e., we assume kxk1 = 1.
Of course this does not require actually modifying the real database.
The potential function that we use is the relative entropy, or KL divergence, between x and xt (when viewed as probability distributions):
|X |
X

x[i]
Ψt = KL(xkx ) =x[i] log
xt [i]
i=1
def

t





.

We begin with a simple fact:
Proposition 4.11. For all t: Ψt ≥ 0, and Ψ1 ≤ log |X |.
Proof. Relative entropy (KL-Divergence) is always a non-negative
quantity, by the log-sum inequality, which states that if a1 , . . . , an andb1 , . . . , bn are non-negative numbers, thenai
ai log
≥
bi
i

X

X
i

!P

ai

ai
.
i bi

Pi

To see that Ψ1 ≤ log |X |, recall that x1 [i] = 1/|X | for all i, and so
P|X |Ψ1 = i=1 x[i] log (|X |x[i]). Noting that x is a probability distribution,
we see that this quantity is maximized when x[1] = 1 and x[i] = 0 for
all i > 1, giving Ψi = log |X |.

We will now argue that at each step, the potential function drops
by at least α2 /4. Because the potential begins at log |X |, and must
always be non-negative, we therefore know that there can be at mostL ≤ 4 log |X|/α2 steps in the database update sequence. To begin, let
us see exactly how much the potential drops at each step:
Lemma 4.12.
Ψt − Ψt+1 ≥ η hrt , xt i − hrt , xi − η 2

4.2. An online mechanism: private multiplicative weights
Proof. Recall thatΨt − Ψt+1 =P|X |i=1 x[i] = 1.

|X |
X

x[i]
xti

x[i] log

i=1

=

=

|X |
X

−

|X |
X

x̂t+1
i /

|X |
X

x[i] log
− log 

|X |
X

!

t+1
i x̂i

P

!

xti

"

i=1

x[i]
xt+1
i

!

i=1

x[i] logx[i] log

i=1

xt+1
i
xti

x[i] log

|X |
X

!

i=1

=

81

xti exp(−ηrt [i]))
xti

!



exp(−ηrt [j])xtj 

j=1





|X |
|X |
X
X
t
= −  x[i]ηrt [i] − log  exp(−ηrt [j])x 
j

i=j

i=1



= −ηhrt , xi − log 

|X |
X



exp(−ηrt [j])xtj j=1≥ −ηhrt , xi − log 

|X |
X



xtj (1 + η 2 − ηrt [j])

j=1





= −ηhrt , xi − log 1 + η 2 − ηhrt , xt i≥ η hrt , xt i − hrt , xi − η 2 .
The first inequality follows from the fact that:exp(−ηrt [j]) ≤ 1 − ηrt [j] + η 2 (rt [j])2 ≤ 1 − ηrt [j] + η 2 .
The second inequality follows from the fact that log(1 + y) ≤ y for
y > −1.

82

Releasing Linear Queries with Correlated Error

The rest of the proof now follows easily. By the conditions of thedatabase/query sequence (described in the hypothesis for Theorem 4.10
above), for every t,
1. |ft (x) − ft (xt )| ≥ α and2. |vt − ft (x)| < α.
Thus, ft (x) < ft (xt ) if and only if vt < ft (xt ). In particular, rt = ft if
ft (xt ) − ft (x) ≥ α, and rt = 1 − ft if ft (x) − ft (xt ) ≥ α. Therefore, byLemma 4.12 and the choice of η = α/2 as described in the Update Rule,Ψt − Ψt+1 ≥

 α2
α
α2
α2
α
hrt , xt i − hrt , xi −≥ (α) −
=
.
2
4
2
4
4

Finally we know:
0 ≤ ΨL ≤ Ψ0 − L ·α2α2≤ log |X | − L .
4
4

|X |
. This completes the proof.
Solving, we find: L ≤ 4 log
α2

We can now combine the Multiplicative Weights Update Rule with
the NumericSparse algorithm to give an interactive query release mechanism. For (, 0) privacy, we essentially (with somewhat worse constants) recover the bound for SmallDB. For (, δ)-differential privacy,
we obtain better bounds, by virtue of being able to use the composition theorem. The queries to NumericSparse are asking whether themagnitude of the error given by estimating fi (x) by applying fi to thecurrent approximation xt to x is above an appropriately chosen threshold T , that is, they are asking if |f (x) − f (xt )| is large. For technicalreasons this is done by asking about f (x) − f (xt ) (without the absolutevalue) and about f (xt ) − f (x). Recall that the NumericSparse algorithm responds with either ⊥ or some (positive) value exceeding T . We
use the mnemonic E for the responses to emphasize that the query is
asking about an error.
Theorem 4.13. The Online Multiplicative Weights Mechanism (via
NumericSparse) is (, 0)-differentially private.

4.2. An online mechanism: private multiplicative weights

83

Algorithm 6 The Online Multiplicative Weights Mechanism (via
NumericSparse) takes as input a private database x, privacy parameters , δ, accuracy parameters α and β, and a stream of linear queries{fi } that may be chosen adaptively from a class of queries Q. It outputs
a stream of answers {ai }.
OnlineMW via NumericSparse (x, {fi }, , δ, α, β)|X |Let c ← 4 log,
α2
if δ = 0 then
Let T ← 18c(log(2|Q|)+log(4c/β))
||x||1else√ p

Let T ←
end if(2+32 2)c log 2δ (log k+log 4c)β
||x||1

Initialize NumericSparse(x, {fi0 }, T, c, , δ) with a stream of queries{fi0 }, outputting a stream of answers Ei .
Let t ← 0, and let x0 ∈ ∆([X ]) satisfy x0i = 1/|X | for all i ∈ [|X |].
for each query fi do
0
Let f2i−1(·) = fi (·) − fi (xt ).
0 (·) = f (xt ) − f (·)
Let f2iii
if E2i−1 = ⊥ and E2i = ⊥ thenLet ai = fi (xt )else
if E2i−1 ∈ R thenLet ai = fi (xt ) + E2i−1
else
Let ai = fi (xt ) − E2i
end ifLet xt+1 = M W (xt , fi , ai )Let t ← t + 1.
end ifend for
Proof. This follows directly from the privacy analysis of NumericSparse, because the OnlineMW algorithm accesses the database only
through NumericSparse.

84

Releasing Linear Queries with Correlated Error

Speaking informally, the proof of utility for the Online Multiplicative Weights Mechanism (via NumericSparse) uses the utility
theorem for the NumericSparse (Theorem 3.28) to conclude that,with high probability, the Multiplicative Weights Update Rule is only
invoked when the query ft is truly a distinguishing query, meaning,|fi (x)−ft (xt )| is “large,” and the released noisy approximations to fi (x)are “accurate.” Under this assumption, we can apply the convergence
theorem (Theorem 4.10) to conclude that the total number of updates
is small and therefore the algorithm can answer all queries in Q.
Theorem 4.14. For δ = 0, with probability at least 1−β, for all queriesfi , the Online Multiplicative Weights Mechanism (via NumericSparse)
returns an answer ai such that |fi (x) − ai | ≤ 3α for any α such that:

32 log |X | log(|Q|) + log
α≥

32 log |X |
α2 β



α2 ||x||1

Proof. Recall that, by Theorem 3.28, given k queries and a maximum
number c of above-threshold queries, NumericSparse is (α, β)-accurate
for any α such that:α≥9c(log k + log(4c/β)).
In our case c = 4 log |X |/α2 and k = 2|Q|, and we have been normalizing, which reduces α by a factor of ||x||1 . With this in mind, we can
take



|X |
32 log |X | log(|Q|) + log 32 αlog2βα=2α ||x||1
and note that with this value we get T = 2α for the case δ = 0.
Assume we are in this high (1 − β) probability case. Then for all isuch that fi triggers an update, |fi (x) − fi (xt )| ≥ T − α = α (Theorem 4.10, condition 1). Thus, fi , ai form a valid pair of query/value
updates as required in the hypothesis of Theorem 4.10 and so, by that|X |theorem, there can be at most c = 4 log
such update steps.
α2
In addition, still by the accuracy properties of the Sparse Vector
algorithm,
1. at most one of E2i−1 , E2i will have value ⊥;4.2. An online mechanism: private multiplicative weights

85

2. for all i such that no update is triggered (ai = fi (xt )) we have|fi (x) − fi (xt )| ≤ T + α = 3α; and3. for all i such that an update is triggered we have |fi (x) − ai | ≤ α(Theorem 4.10, condition 2).
Optimizing the above expression for α and removing the normalization factor, we find that the OnlineMW mechanism can answer eachlinear query to accuracy 3α except with probability β for: 36 log |X | log(|Q|) + log

2/3
α = ||x||1 




2/3

32 log |X |1/3 ||x||1β 1/3which is comparable to the SmallDB mechanism.
By repeating the same argument, but instead using the utility theorem for the (, δ)-private version of Sparse Vector (Theorem 3.28), we
obtain the following theorem.
Theorem 4.15. For δ > 0, with probability at least 1−β, for all queriesfi , OnlineMW returns an answer ai such that |fi (x) − ai | ≤ 3α for any
α such that:
q



√
|X |
(2 + 32 2) · log |X | log 2δ log |Q| + log 32 αlog
2βα≥α||x||1
Again optimizing the above expression for α and removing the normalization factor, we find that the OnlineMW mechanism can answer
each linear query to accuracy 3α except with probability β, for:q 1/2√
32||x||1
2
log
|Q|
+
log
(2
+
32
2)
·
log
|X
|
log
δ
β
1/2 

α = ||x||1 which gives better accuracy (as a function of ||x||1 ) than the SmallDB
mechanism. Intuitively, the greater accuracy comes from the iterative
nature of the mechanism, which allows us to take advantage of ourcomposition theorems for (, δ)-privacy. The SmallDB mechanism runs

86

Releasing Linear Queries with Correlated Error

in just a single shot, and so there is no opportunity to take advantage
of composition.
The accuracy of the private multiplicative weights algorithm hasdependencies on several parameters, which are worth further discussion. In the end, the algorithm answers queries using the sparse vector technique paired with a learning algorithm for linear functions. As
we proved in the last section, the sparse vector technique introduces
error that scales like O(c log k/(kxk1 )) when a total of k sensitivity
1/kxk1 queries are made, and at most c of them can have “above threshold" answers, for any threshold T . Recall that these error terms arise
because the privacy analysis for the sparse vector algorithm allows us
to “pay” only for the above threshold queries, and therefore can add
noise O(c/(kxk1 )) to each query. On the other hand, since we end up
adding independent Laplace noise with scale Ω(c/(kxk1 )) to k queries
in total, we expect that the maximum error over all k queries is larger
by a log k factor. But what is c, and what queries should we ask? The
multiplicative weights learning algorithm gives us a query strategy anda guarantee that no more than c = O(log |X |/α2 ) queries will be above athreshold of T = O(α), for any α. (The queries we ask are always: “ Howmuch does the real answer differ from the predicted answer of the current multiplicative weights hypothesis.” The answers to these questions
both give us the true answers to the queries, as well as instructions how
to update the learning algorithm appropriately when a query is above
threshold.) Together, this leads us to set the threshold to be O(α),
where α is the expression that satisfies: α = O(log |X | log k/(kxk1 α2 )).
This minimizes the two sources of error: error from the sparse vector
technique, and error from failing to update the multiplicative weights
hypothesis.

4.3

Bibliographical notes

The offline query release mechanism given in this section is from Blumet al. [8], which gave bounds in terms of the VC-Dimension of the queryclass (Theorem 4.9). The generalization to fat shattering dimension is
given in [72].

4.3. Bibliographical notes87

The online query release mechanism given in this section is from
Hardt and Rothblum [44]. This mechanism uses the classic multiplicative weights update method, for which Arora, Hazan and Kale give an
excellent survey [1]. Slightly improved bounds for the private multiplicative weights mechanism were given by Gupta et al. [39], and theanalysis here follows the presentation from [39].

5Generalizations

In this section we generalize the query release algorithms of the previous
section. As a result, we get bounds for arbitrary low sensitivity queries(not just linear queries), as well as new bounds for linear queries. These
generalizations also shed some light on a connection between query
release and machine learning.
The SmallDB offline query release mechanism in Section 4 is a
special case of what we call the net mechanism. We saw that bothmechanisms in that section yield synthetic databases, which provide aconvenient means for approximating the value of any query in Q on theprivate database: just evaluate the query on the synthetic database andtake the result as the noisy answer. More generally, a mechanism canproduce a data structure of arbitrary form, that, together with a fixed,
public, algorithm (independent of the database) provides a method forapproximating the values of queries.
The Net mechanism is a straightforward generalization of the
SmallDB mechanism: First, fix, independent of the actual database, an
α-net of data structures such that evaluation of any query in Q using
the released data structure gives a good (within an additive α error)
estimate of the value of the query on the private database. Next, apply

885.1. Mechanisms via α-nets

89

the exponential mechanism to choose an element of this net, where thequality function minimizes the maximum error, over the queries in Q,
for the elements of the net.
We also generalize the online multiplicative weights algorithm sothat we can instantiate it with any other online learning algorithm
for learning a database with respect to a set of queries. We note thatsuch a mechanism can be run either online, or offline, where the setof queries to be asked to the “online” mechanism is instead selectedusing a “private distinguisher,” which identifies queries on which thecurrent hypothesis of the learner differs substantially from the real
database. These are queries that would have yielded an update step inthe online algorithm. A “distinguisher” turns out to be equivalent to anagnostic learning algorithm, which sheds light on a source of hardnessfor efficient query release mechanisms.
In the following sections, we will discuss data structures for classesof queries Q.
Definition 5.1. A data structure D drawn from some class of data
structures D for a class of queries Q is implicitly endowed with anevaluation function Eval : D × Q → R with which we can evaluate any
query in Q on D. However, to avoid being encumbered by notation, we
will write simply f (D) to denote Eval(D, f ) when the meaning is clear
from context.

5.1

Mechanisms via α-nets

Given a collection of queries Q, we define an α-net as follows:
Definition 5.2 (α-net). An α-net of data structures with respect to aclass of queries Q is a set N ⊂ N|X | such that for all x ∈ N|X | , there
exists an element of the α-net y ∈ N such that:max |f (x) − f (y)| ≤ α .
f ∈Q

We write Nα (Q) to denote an α-net of minimum cardinality among theset of all α-nets for Q.

90

Generalizations

That is, for every possible database x, there exists a member of the
α-net that “looks like” x with respect to all queries in Q, up to an error
tolerance of α.
Small α-nets will be useful for us, because when paired with theexponential mechanism, they will lead directly to mechanisms foranswering queries with high accuracy. Given a class of functions Q,
we will define an instantiation of the exponential mechanism known as
the Net mechanism. We first observe that the Net mechanism preserves
ε-differential privacy.
Algorithm 7 The Net Mechanism
NetMechanism(x, Q, ε, α)Let R ← Nα (Q)Let q : N|X | × R → R be defined to be:q(x, y) = − max |f (x) − f (y)|f ∈QSample And Output y ∈ R with the exponential mechanism
ME (x, q, R)

Proposition 5.1. The Net mechanism is (ε, 0) differentially private.
Proof. The Net mechanism is simply an instantiation of the exponential
mechanism. Therefore, privacy follows from Theorem 3.10.
We may similarly call on our analysis of the exponential mechanism
to begin understanding the utility guarantees of the Net mechanism:
Proposition 5.2. Let Q be any class of sensitivity 1/kxk1 queries. Let y
be the database output by NetMechanism(x, Q, ε, α). Then with probability 1 − β:max |f (x) − f (y)| ≤ α +f ∈Q

2 log (|Nα (Q)|) + log
εkxk1

 
1
β

.

5.2. The iterative construction mechanism

91

1
, and
Proof. By applying Theorem 3.11 and noting that S(q) = kxk
1
that OPTq (D) ≤ α by the definition of an α-net, we find:2
Pr max |f (x) − f (y)| ≥ α +(log (|Nα (Q)|) + t) ≤ e−t .
f ∈Q
εkxk1


Plugging in t = log



 
1
β

completes the proof.

We can therefore see that an upper bound on |Nα (Q)| for a collection of functions Q immediately gives an upper bound on the accuracy
that a differentially private mechanism can provide simultaneously for
all functions in the class Q.
This is exactly what we did in Section 4.1, where we saw that the
key quantity is the VC-dimension of Q, when Q is a class of linear
queries.

5.2

The iterative construction mechanism

In this section, we derive an offline generalization of the private multiplicative weights algorithm, which can be instantiated with any
properly defined learning algorithm. Informally, a database update
algorithm maintains a sequence of data structures D1 , D2 , . . . thatgive increasingly good approximations to the input database x (in asense that depends on the database update algorithm). Moreover, thesemechanisms produce the next data structure in the sequence by considering only one query f that distinguishes the real database in the sensethat f (Dt ) differs significantly from f (x). The algorithm in this section
shows that, up to small factors, solving the query-release problem in adifferentially private manner is equivalent to solving the simpler learning or distinguishing problem in a differentially private manner: givena private distinguishing algorithm and a non-private database update
algorithm, we get a corresponding private release algorithm. We canplug in the exponential mechanism as a canonical private distinguisher,and the multiplicative weights algorithm as a generic database update
algorithm for the general linear query setting, but more efficient distinguishers are possible in special cases.

92

Generalizations

Syntactically, we will consider functions of the form U : D×Q×R →D, where D represents a class of data structures on which queries in
Q can be evaluated. The inputs to U are a data structure in D, which
represents the current data structure Dt ; a query f , which represents
the distinguishing query, and may be restricted to a certain set Q;
and also a real number, which estimates f (x). Formally, we define a
database update sequence, to capture the sequence of inputs to U used
to generate the database sequence D1 , D2 , . . ..
Definition 5.3 (Database Update Sequence). Let x ∈ N|X | be any
database and let (Dt , ft , vt ) t=1,...,L ∈ (D × Q × R)L be a sequence oftuples. We say the sequence is a (U, x, Q, α, T )-database update sequence
if it satisfies the following properties:
1. D1 = U (⊥, ·, ·),2. for every t = 1, 2, . . . , L, ft (x) − ft (Dt ) ≥ α,
3. for every t = 1, 2, . . . , L, |ft (x) − vt | < α,
4. and for every t = 1, 2, . . . , L − 1, Dt+1 = U (Dt , ft , vt ).
We note that for all of the database update algorithms we consider,
the approximate answer vt is used only to determine the sign of ft (x) −ft (Dt ), which is the motivation for requiring that the estimate of ft (x)(vt ) have error smaller than α. The main measure of efficiency we’reinterested in from a database update algorithm is the maximum numberof updates we need to perform before the database Dt approximates x
well with respect to the queries in Q. To this end we define a database
update algorithm as follows:
Definition 5.4 (Database Update Algorithm). Let U : D × Q × R → D
be an update rule and let T : R → R be a function. We say U is a T (α)database update algorithm for query class Q if for every database x ∈N|X | , every (U, x, Q, α, L)-database update sequence satisfies L ≤ T (α).
Note that the definition of a T (α)-database update algorithm
implies that if U is a T (α)-database update algorithm, then given any
maximal (U, x, Q, α, U )-database update sequence, the final database
DL must satisfy maxf ∈Q f (x) − f (DL ) ≤ α or else there would exist

5.2. The iterative construction mechanism

93

another query satisfying property 2 of Definition 5.3, and thus there
would exist a (U, x, Q, α, L + 1)-database update sequence, contradicting maximality. That is, the goal of a T (α) database update rule isto generate a maximal database update sequence, and the final data
structure in a maximal database update sequence necessarily encodes
the approximate answers to every query f ∈ Q.
Now that we have defined database update algorithms, we canremark that what we really proved in Theorem 4.10 was that the Multiplicative Weights algorithm is a T (α)-database update algorithm for
T (α) = 4 log |X |/α2 .
Before we go on, let us build some intuition for what a database
update algorithm is. A T (α)-database update algorithm begins withsome initial guess D1 about what the true database x looks like.
Because this guess is not based on any information, it is quite likely that
D1 and x bear little resemblance, and that there is some f ∈ Q that isable to distinguish between these two databases by at least α: that is,that f (x) and f (D1 ) differ in value by at least α. What a database
update algorithm does is to update its hypothesis Dt given evidence
that its current hypothesis Dt−1 is incorrect: at each stage, it takes as
input some query in Q which distinguishes its current hypothesis fromthe true database, and then it outputs a new hypothesis. The parameter T (α) is an upper bound on the number of times that the database
update algorithm will have to update its hypothesis: it is a promisethat after at most T (α) distinguishing queries have been provided, thealgorithm will finally have produced a hypothesis that looks like thetrue database with respect to Q, at least up to error α.1 For a database
update algorithm, smaller bounds T (α) are more desirable.
Database Update Algorithms and Online Learning Algorithms: We
remark that database update algorithms are essentially online learning
1

Imagine that the database update algorithm is attempting to sculpt x out of a
block of clay. Initially, its sculpture D1 bears no resemblance to the true database: it
is simply a block of clay. However, a helpful distinguisher points out to the sculptor
places in which the clay juts out much farther than the true target database: thesculptor dutifully pats down those bumps. If the distinguisher always finds large
protrusions, of magnitude at least α, the sculpture will be finished soon, and thedistinguisher’s time will not be wasted!

94

Generalizations

algorithms in the mistake bound model. In the setting of online learning,
unlabeled examples arrive in some arbitrary order, and the learningalgorithm must attempt to label them.
Background from Learning Theory. In the mistake bound model oflearning, labeled examples (xi , yi ) ∈ X × {0, 1} arrive one at a time,in a potentially adversarial order. At time i, the learning algorithm
A observes xi , and must make a prediction ŷi about the label forxi . It then sees the true label yi , and is said to make a mistake if
its prediction was wrong: i.e., if yi 6= ŷi . A learning algorithm A fora class of functions C is said to have a mistake bound of M , if for
all f ∈ C, and for all adversarially selected sequences of examples(x1 , f (x1 )), . . . , (xi , f (xi )), . . ., A never makes more than M mistakes.
Without loss of generality, we can think of such a learning algorithm
as maintaining some hypothesis fˆ : X → {0, 1} at all times, andupdating it only when it makes a mistake. The adversary in this model
is quite powerful — it can choose the sequence of labeled examples
adaptively, knowing the current hypothesis of the learning algorithm,
and its entire history of predictions. Hence, learning algorithms
that have finite mistake bounds can be useful in extremely general
settings.
It is not hard to see that mistake bounded online learning algorithms always exist for finite classes of functions C. Consider, for example, the halving algorithm. The halving algorithm initially maintains a
set S of functions from C consistent with the examples that it has seen
so far: Initially S = C. Whenever a new unlabeled example arrives,it predicts according to the majority vote of its consistent hypotheses: that is, it predicts label 1 whenever |{f ∈ S : f (xi ) = 1}| ≥ |S|/2.
Whenever it makes a mistake on an example xi , it updates S by removing any inconsistent function: S ← {f ∈ S : f (xi ) = yi }. Note thatwhenever it makes a mistake, the size of S is cut in half! So long as
all examples are labeled by some function f ∈ C, there is at least
one function f ∈ C that is never removed from S. Hence, the halving
algorithm has a mistake bound of log |C|.
Generalizing beyond boolean labels, we can view database update
algorithms as online learning algorithms in the mistake bound model:

5.2. The iterative construction mechanism

95

here, examples that arrive are the queries (which may come in adversarial order). The labels are the approximate values of the queries whenevaluated on the database. The database update algorithm hypothesis
Dt makes a mistake on query f if |f (Dt ) − f (x)| ≥ α, in which case
we learn the label of f (that is, vt ) and allow the database update
algorithm to update the hypothesis. Saying that an algorithm U is a
T (α)-database update algorithm is akin to saying that it has a mistake bound of T (α): no adversarially chosen sequence of queries canever cause it to make more than T (α)-mistakes. Indeed, the database
update algorithms that we will see are taken from the online learning
literature. The multiplicative weights mechanism is based on an online
learning algorithm known as Hedge, which we have already discussed.
The Median Mechanism (later in this section) is based on the Halving
Algorithm, and the Perceptron algorithm is based (coincidentally) onan algorithm known as Perceptron. We won’t discuss Perceptron here,
but it operates by making additive updates, rather than the multiplicative updates used by multiplicative weights.
A database update algorithm for a class Q will be useful together
with a corresponding distinguisher, whose job is to output a functionthat behaves differently on the true database x and the hypothesis Dt ,that is, to point out a mistake.
Definition 5.5 ((F (ε), γ)-Private Distinguisher). Let Q be a set of
queries, let γ ≥ 0 and let F (ε) : R → R be a function. An algorithm Distinguishε : N|X | × D → Q is an (F (ε), γ)-Private Distinguisher for Q if for every setting of the privacy parameter ε, on every
pair of inputs x ∈ N|X | , D ∈ D it is (ε, 0)-differentially private withrespect to x and it outputs an f ∗ ∈ Q such that |f ∗ (x) − f ∗ (D)| ≥maxf ∈Q |f (x) − f (D)| − F (ε) with probability at least 1 − γ.
Remark 5.1. In machine learning, the goal is to find a function f :X → {0, 1} from a class of functions Q that best labels a collection oflabeled examples (x1 , y1 ), . . . , (xm , ym ) ∈ X × {0, 1}. (Examples (x, 0)
are known as negative examples, and examples (x, 1) are known as positive examples). Each example xi has a true label yi , and a function
f correctly labels xi if f (xi ) = yi . An agnostic learning algorithm fora class Q is an algorithm that can find the function in Q that labels

96

Generalizations

all of the data points approximately as well as the best function in Q,
even if no function in Q can perfectly label them. Note that equivalently, an agnostic learning algorithm is one that maximizes the numberof positive examples labeled 1 minus the number of negative examples labeled 1. Phrased in this way, we can see that a distinguisher as
defined above is just an agnostic learning algorithm: just imagine thatx contains all of the “positive” examples, and that y contains all of the“negative examples.” (Note that it is ok of x and y are not disjoint —in the learning problem, the same example can occur with both a positive and a negative label, since agnostic learning does not require thatany function perfectly label every example.) Finally, note also that forclasses of linear queries Q, a distinguisher is simply an optimization
algorithm. Because for linear queries f , f (x) − f (y) = f (x − y), a
distinguisher simply seeks to find arg maxf ∈Q |f (x − y)|.
Note that, a priori, a differentially private distinguisher is a weakerobject than a differentially private release algorithm: A distinguisher
merely finds a query in a set Q with the approximately largest value,
whereas a release algorithm must find the answer to every query in Q. In
the algorithm that follows, however, we reduce release to optimization.
We will first analyze the IC algorithm, and then instantiate it witha specific distinguisher and database update algorithm. What follows
is a formal analysis, but the intuition for the mechanism is simple:
we simply run the iterative database construction algorithm to construct a hypothesis that approximately matches x with respect to thequeries Q. If at each round our distinguisher succeeds in finding a querythat has high discrepancy between the hypothesis database and the true
database, then our database update algorithm will output a databasethat is β-accurate with respect to Q. If the distinguisher ever fails tofind such a query, then it must be that there are no such queries, and our
database update algorithm has already learned an accurate hypothesis
with respect to the queries of interest! This requires at most T iterations, and so we access the data only 2T times using (ε0 , 0)-differentiallyprivate methods (running the given distinguisher, and then checking its
answer with the Laplace mechanism). Privacy will therefore follow fromour composition theorems.

5.2. The iterative construction mechanism

97

Algorithm 8 The Iterative Construction (IC) Mechanism. It takes as
input a parameter ε0 , an (F (ε0 ), γ)-Private Distinguisher Distinguishfor Q, together with an T (α)-iterative database update algorithm U
for Q.
IC(x, α, ε0 , Distinguish, U ):Let D0 = U (⊥, ·, ·).
for t = 1 to T (α/2) do
Let f (t) = Distinguish(x,Dt−1 ) 
Let v̂ (t) = f (t) (x) + Lap kxk11 ε0 .
if |v̂ (t) − f (t) (Dt−1 )| < 3α/4 thenOutput y = Dt−1 .
else
Let Dt = U (Dt−1 , f (t) , v̂ (t) ).
end ifend for
Output y = DT (α/2) .

The analysis of this algorithm just involves checking the technical details of a simple intuition. Privacy will follow because thealgorithm is just the composition of 2T (α) steps, each of which is(ε0 , 0)-differentially private. Accuracy follows because we are always
outputting the last database in a maximal database update sequence.
If the algorithm has not yet formed a maximal Database Update
Sequence, then the distinguishing algorithm will find a distinguishingquery to add another step to the sequence.
Theorem 5.3. The IC algorithm is (ε, 0)-differentially private forε0 ≤ ε/2T (α/2). The IC algorithm is (ε, δ)-differentially private forεε0 ≤ √.
4T (α/2) log(1/δ)

Proof. The algorithm runs at most 2T (α/2) compositions of ε0 differentially private algorithms. Recall from Theorem 3.20 that ε0
differentially private algorithms are 2kε0 differentially private underp
2k-fold composition, and are (ε0 , δ) private for ε0 = 4k ln(1/δ 0 )ε0 +2kε0 (eε0 − 1). Plugging in the stated values for ε0 proves the claim.

98

Generalizations

Theorem 5.4. Given an (F (ε), γ)-private distinguisher, a parameter ε0 ,and a T (α)-Database Update Algorithm, with probability at least 1−β,
the IC algorithm returns a database y such that: maxf ∈Q |f (x)−f (y)| ≤α for any α such that where:α ≥ max

8 log(2T (α/2)/β), 8F (ε0 )ε0 kxk1



so long as γ ≤ β/(2T (α/2)).
Proof. The analysis is straightforward.
Recall that if Yi ∼ Lap(1/(εkxk1 )), we have: Pr[|Yi | ≥ t/(εkxk1 )] =exp(−t). By a union bound, if Y1 , . . . , Yk ∼ Lap(1/(εkxk1 )), thenPr[maxi |Yi | ≥ t/(εkxk1 )] ≤ k exp(−t). Therefore, because we makeat most T (α/2) draws from Lap(1/(ε0 kxk1 )), except with probability
at most β/2, for all t:|v̂ (t) − f (t) (x)| ≤1
α
2T (α/2)≤ .
log
ε0 kxk1β8Note that by assumption, γ ≤ β/(2T (α/2)), so we also have that except
with probability β/2:
|f (t) (x) − f (t) (Dt−1 )| ≥ max |f (x) − f (Dt−1 )| − F (ε0 )f ∈Q≥ max |f (x) − f (Dt−1 )| −
f ∈Q

α
.
8

For the rest of the argument, we will condition on both of these eventsoccurring, which is the case except with probability β.
There are two cases. Either a data structure D0 = DT (α/2) is output, or data structure D0 = Dt for t < T (α/2) is output. First, suppose D0 = DT (α/2) . Since for all t < T (α/2) it must have been thecase that |v̂ (t) − f (t) (Dt−1 )| ≥ 3α/4 and by our conditioning, |v̂ (t) −f (t) (x)| ≤ α8 , we know for all t: |f (t) (x) − f (t) (Dt−1 )| ≥ α/2. Therefore,
the sequence (Dt , f (t) , v̂ (t) ), formed a maximal (U, x, Q, α/2, T (α/2))Database Update Sequence (recall Definition 5.3), and we have thatmaxf ∈Q |f (x) − f (x0 )| ≤ α/2 as desired.
Next, suppose D0 = Dt−1 for t < T (α/2). Then it must have been
the case that for t, |v̂ (t) − f (t) (Dt−1 )| < 3α/4. By our conditioning, in5.2. The iterative construction mechanism

99

this case it must be that |f (t) (x) − f (t) (Dt−1 )| < 7α
8 , and that therefore
by the properties of an (F (ε0 ), γ)-distinguisher:max |f (x) − f (D0 )| <f ∈Q

7α
+ F (ε0 ) ≤ α
8as desired.
Note that we can use the exponential mechanism as a private distinguisher: take the domain to be Q, and let the quality score be:q(D, f ) = |f (D) − f (Dt )|, which has sensitivity 1/kxk1 . Applying the
exponential mechanism utility theorem, we get:
Theorem 5.5. The exponential mechanism is an (F (ε), γ) distinguisher
for:


2
|Q|
F (ε) =
log.
kxk1 εγ
Therefore, using the exponential mechanism as a distinguisher,
Theorem 5.4 gives:
Theorem 5.6. Given a T (α)-Database Update Algorithm and a parameter ε0 together with the exponential mechanism distinguisher, withprobability at least 1 − β, the IC algorithm returns a database y suchthat: maxf ∈Q |f (x) − f (y)| ≤ α where:|Q|
16
8 log(2T (α/2)/β)α ≤ max,log
ε0 kxk1
kxk1 ε0γso long as γ ≤ β/(2T (α/2)).
Plugging in our values of ε0 :Theorem 5.7. Given a T (α)-Database Update Algorithm, together
with the exponential mechanism distinguisher, the IC mechanism is
ε-differentially private and with probability at least 1 − β, the IC algorithm returns a database y such that: maxf ∈Q |f (x) − f (y)| ≤ α where:
8T (α/2)|Q|
α≤log
kxk1 ε
γ




100

Generalizationsand (ε, δ)-differentially private for:p

16 T (α/2) log(1/δ)
|Q|
α≤
log
kxk1 εγ

so long as γ ≤ β/(2T (α/2)).
Note that in the language of this section, what we proved in
Theorem 4.10 was exactly that the multiplicative weights algorithm|X |is a T (α)-Database Update Algorithm for T (α) = 4 log. Plugging
α2this bound into Theorem 5.7 recovers the bound we got for the online
multiplicative weights algorithm. Note that now, however, we can plugin other database update algorithms as well.
5.2.1

Applications: other database update algorithms

Here we give several other database update algorithms. The first works
directly from α-nets, and therefore can get non-trivial bounds evenfor nonlinear queries (unlike multiplicative weights, which only works
for linear queries). The second is another database update algorithm forlinear queries, but with bounds incomparable to multiplicative weights.
(In general, it will yield improved bounds when the dataset has size
close to the size of the data universe, whereas multiplicative weights
will give better bounds when the dataset is much smaller than the data
universe.)
We first discuss the median mechanism, which takes advantage of
α-nets. The median mechanism does not operate on databases, butinstead on median data structures:
Definition 5.6 (Median Data Structure). A median data structure D isa collection of databases: D ⊂ N|X | . Any query f can be evaluated ona median data structure as follows: f (D) = Median({f (x) : x ∈ D}).
In words, a median data structure is just a set of databases. To
evaluate a query on it, we just evaluate the query on every database in
the set, and then return the median value. Note that the answers givenby the median data structure need not be consistent with any database!
However, it will have the useful property that whenever it makes an5.2. The iterative construction mechanism

101

error, it will rule out at least half of the data sets in its collection as
being inconsistent with the true data set.
The median mechanism is then very simple:
Algorithm 9 The Median Mechanism (MM) Update Rule. It inputs
and outputs a median data structure. It is instantiated with an α-net
Nα (Q) for a query class Q, and its initial state is D = Nα (Q)M Mα,Q (Dt , ft , vt ):if Dt = ⊥ thenOutput D0 ← Nα (Q).
end ifif vt < ft (Dt ) thenOutput Dt+1 ← Dt \ {x ∈ D : ft (x) ≥ ft (Dt )}.
else
Output Dt+1 ← Dt \ {x ∈ D : ft (x) ≤ ft (Dt )}.
end if
The intuition for the median mechanism is as follows. It maintains
a set of databases that are consistent with the answers to the distinguishing queries it has seen so far. Whenever it receives a queryand answer that differ substantially from the real database, it updates
itself to remove all of the databases that are inconsistent with the
new information. Because it always chooses its answer as the median
database among the set of consistent databases it is maintaining, every
update step removes at least half of the consistent databases! Moreover,because the set of databases that it chooses initially is an α-net withrespect to Q, there is always some database that is never removed,
because it remains consistent on all queries. This limits how many
update rounds the mechanism can perform. How does the medianmechanism do?
Theorem 5.8. For any class of queries Q, The Median Mechanism is a
T (α)-database update algorithm for T (α) = log |Nα (Q)|.
Proof. We must show that any sequence {(Dt , ft , vt )}t=1,...,L with theproperty that |f t (Dt ) − f t (x)| > α and |vt − f t (x)| < α cannot have
L > log |Nα (Q)|. First observe that because D0 = Nα (Q) is an α-net

102

Generalizations

for Q, by definition there is at least one y such that y ∈ Dt for all t(Recall that the update rule is only invoked on queries with error atleast α. Since there is guaranteed to be a database y that has error lessthan α on all queries, it is never removed by an update step). Thus,
we can always answer queries with Dt , and for all t, |Dt | ≥ 1. Next
observe that for each t, |Dt | ≤ |Dt−1 |/2. This is because each update
step removes at least half of the elements: all of the elements at least as
large as, or at most as large as the median element in Dt with respect
to query ft . Therefore, after L update steps, |DL | ≤ 1/2L · |Nα (Q)|.
Setting L > log |Nα (Q)| gives |DL | < 1, a contradiction.
Remark 5.2. For classes of linear queries Q, we may refer to theupper bound on Nα (Q) given in Theorem 4.2 to see that theMedian Mechanism is a T (α)-database update algorithm for T (α) =log |Q| log |X |/α2 . This is worse than the bound we gave for the Multiplicative Weights algorithm by a factor of log |Q|. On the other hand,nothing about the Median Mechanism algorithm is specific to linear
queries — it works just as well for any class of queries that admits asmall net. We can take advantage of this fact for nonlinear low sensitivity queries.
Note that if we want a mechanism which promises (ε, δ)-privacy forδ > 0, we do not even need a particularly small net. In fact, the trivial
net that simply includes every database of size kxk1 will be sufficient:
Theorem 5.9. For every class of queries Q and every α ≥ 0, there isan α-net for databases of size kxk1 = n of size Nα (Q) ≤ |X |n .
Proof. We can simply let Nα (Q) be the set of all |X |n databases yof size kyk1 = n. Then, for every x such that kxk1 = n, we havex ∈ Nα (Q), and so clearly: miny∈Nα (Q) maxf ∈Q |f (x) − f (y)| = 0.
We can use this fact to get query release algorithms for arbitrary
low sensitivity queries, not just linear queries. Applying Theorem 5.7
to the above bound, we find:5.2. The iterative construction mechanism

103

Theorem 5.10. Using the median mechanism, together with theexponential mechanism distinguisher, the IC mechanism is (ε, δ)differentially private and with probability at least 1 − β, the IC algorithm returns a database y such that: maxf ∈Q |f (x) − f (y)| ≤ α where:q

16 log |X | log 1δ log
√
α≤
nε



2|Q|n log |X |β,where Q can be any family of sensitivity 1/n queries, not necessarily
linear.
Proof. This follows simply by combining Theorems 5.8 and 5.9 to findthat the Median Mechanism is a T (α)-Database Update Algorithm
for T (α) = n log |X | for databases of size kxk1 = n for every α > 0and every class of queries Q. Plugging this into Theorem 5.7 gives thedesired bound.
Note that this bound is almost as good as we were able to achieve
for the special case of linear queries in Theorem 4.15! However, unlikein the case of linear queries, because arbitrary queries may not have
α-nets which are significantly smaller than the trivial net used here,
we are not able to get nontrivial accuracy guarantees if we want (ε, 0)differential privacy.
The next database update algorithm we present is again for linear
queries, but achieves incomparable bounds to those of the multiplicative weights database update algorithm. It is based on the Perceptron
algorithm from online learning (just as multiplicative weights is derived
from the hedge algorithm from online learning). Since the algorithm
is for linear queries, we treat each query ft ∈ Q as being a vector
ft ∈ [0, 1]|X | . Note that rather than doing a multiplicative update,
Algorithm 10 The Perceptron update rule
Perceptronα,Q (xt , ft , vt ):If: xt = ⊥ then: output xt+1 = 0|X |Else if: ft (xt ) > vt then: output xt+1 = xt − |Xα | · ft
Else if: ft (xt ) ≤ vt then: output xt+1 = xt + |Xα | · ft

104

Generalizations

as in the MW database update algorithm, here we do an additive
update. In the analysis, we will see that this database update algorithm has an exponentially worse dependence (as compared to multiplicative weights) on the size of the universe, but a superior dependence
on the size of the database. Thus, it will achieve better performancefor databases that are large compared to the size of the data universe,
and worse performance for databases that are small compared to thesize of the data universe.
Theorem 5.11. Perceptron is a T (α)-database update algorithm for:
T (α) =

kxk2
kxk1

2

·

|X |
.
α2

Proof. Unlike for multiplicative weights, it will be more convenient toanalyze the Perceptron algorithm without normalizing the database to
be a probability distribution, and then prove that it is a T (α0 ) databasekxk2 |X |update algorithm for T (α0 ) = α202 . Plugging in α0 = αkxk1 will thencomplete the proof. Recall that since each query ft is linear, we canview ft ∈ [0, 1]|X | as a vector with the evaluation of ft (x) being equal
to hft , xi.
We must show that any sequence {(xt , ft , vt )}t=1,...,L with the property that |ft (xt ) − ft (x)| > α0 and |vt − ft (x)| < α0 cannot havekxk2 |X |L > α202 .
We use a potential argument to show that for every t = 1, 2, . . . , L,
xt+1 is significantly closer to x than xt . Specifically, our potential function is the L22 norm of the database x − xt , defined as
kxk22 =

X

x(i)2 .

i∈X

Observe that kx − x1 k22 = kxk22 since x1 = 0, and kxk22 ≥ 0. Thus it
suffices to show that in every step, the potential decreases by α02 /|X |.
We analyze the case where ft (xt ) > vt , the analysis for the opposite
case will be similar. Let Rt = xt − x. Observe that in this case we haveft (Rt ) = ft (xt ) − ft (x) ≥ α0 .

5.2. The iterative construction mechanism

105

Now we can analyze the drop in potential.
kRt k22 − kRt+1 k22 = kRt k22 − kRt − (α0 /|X |) · ft k22=

X((Rt (i))2 − (Rt (i) − (α0 /|X |) · ft (i))2 )

i∈X

=
=

X
i∈X
2α0

|X |

2α0
α02
ft (i)2· Rt (i)ft (i) −
|X |
|X |2
ft (Rt ) −

!

α02 X
ft (i)2|X |2 i∈X

2α0
α02
ft (Rt ) −
|X |
|X |
|X |2
α02
α02
2α02
−
=
.
≥
|X |
|X |
|X |
≥

This bounds the number of steps by kxk22 |X |/α02 , and completes theproof.
We may now plug this bound into Theorem 5.7 to obtain the following bound on the iterative construction mechanism:
Theorem 5.12. Using the perceptron database update algorithm,
together with the exponential mechanism distinguisher, the IC mechanism is (ε, δ)-differentially private and with probability at least 1 − β,the IC algorithm returns a database y such that: maxf ∈Q |f (x)−f (y)| ≤α where:r√ plog(2|QkX |·kxk22 )1/4
4 4 kxk2 (4|X | ln(1/δ))
β
√
,
α≤
kxk1
where Q is a class of linear queries.
If the database x represents the edge set of a graph, for example,
we will have xi ∈ [0, 1] for all i, and so:
p

kxk2
≤
kxk1



1
kxk1

3/4

.

Therefore, the perceptron database update algorithm will outperformthe multiplicative weights database update algorithm on dense graphs.

106
5.2.2

Generalizations
Iterative construction mechanisms and online algorithms

In this section, we generalize the iterative construction framework to
the online setting by using the NumericSparse algorithm. The online
multiplicative weights algorithm which saw in the last chapter is an
instantiation of this approach. One way of viewing the online algorithm is that the NumericSparse algorithm is serving as the private
distinguisher in the IC framework, but that the “hard work” of distinguishing is being foisted upon the unsuspecting user. That is: if theuser asks a query that does not serve as a good distinguishing query,this is a good case. We cannot use the database update algorithm toupdate our hypothesis, but we don’t need to! By definition, the current hypothesis is a good approximation to the private database withrespect to this query. On the other hand, if the user asks a query forwhich our current hypothesis is not a good approximation to the true
database, then by definition the user has found a good distinguishingquery, and we are again in a good case — we can run the database
update algorithm to update our hypothesis!
The idea of this algorithm is very simple. We will use a database
update algorithm to publicly maintain a hypothesis database. Everytime a query arrives, we will classify it as either a hard query, or aneasy query. An easy query is one for which the answer given by the
hypothesis database is approximately correct, and no update step isneeded: if we know that a given query is easy, we can simply computeits answer on the publicly known hypothesis database rather than on
the private database, and incur no privacy loss. If we know that a queryis hard, we can compute and release its answer using the Laplace mechanism, and update our hypothesis using the database update algorithm.
This way, our total privacy loss is not proportional to the number ofqueries asked, but instead proportional to the number of hard queries
asked. Because the database update algorithm guarantees that there
will not need to be many update steps, we can be guaranteed that the
total privacy loss will be small.

Theorem 5.13. OnlineIC is (ε, δ)-differentially private.

5.2. The iterative construction mechanism

107

Algorithm 11 The Online Iterative Construction Mechanism parameterized by a T (α)-database update algorithm U . It takes as input a
private database x, privacy parameters ε, δ, accuracy parameters α andβ, and a stream of queries {fi } that may be chosen adaptively from aclass of queries Q. It outputs a stream of answers {ai }.
OnlineICU (x, {fi }, ε, δ, α, β)Let c ← T (α),
if δ = 0 then
Let T ← 18c(log(2|Q|)+log(4c/β))
||x||1else√ p(2+32 2)c log 2 (log k+log 4c )δβLet T ←
||x||1
end ifInitialize NumericSparse(x, {fi0 }, T, c, ε, δ) with a stream of queries{fi0 }, outputting a stream of answers a0i .
Let t ← 0, D0 ∈ x be such that Di0 = 1/|X | for all i ∈ [|X |].
for each query fi do
0
Let f2i−1(·) = fi (·) − fi (Dt ).
0
Let f2i (·) = fi (Dt ) − fi (·)
if a02i−1 = ⊥ and a02i = ⊥ thenLet ai = fi (Dt )else
if a02i−1 ∈ R thenLet ai = fi (Dt ) + a02i−1
else
Let ai = fi (Dt ) − a02i
end if
Let Dt+1 = U (Dt , fi , ai )Let t ← t + 1.
end ifend for

Proof. This follows directly from the privacy analysis of NumericSparse, because the OnlineIC algorithm accesses the database only
through NumericSparse.

108

Generalizations

Theorem 5.14. For δ = 0, With probability at least 1 − β, for all
queries fi , OnlineIC returns an answer ai such that |fi (x) − ai | ≤ 3αfor any α such that:α≥

9T (α)(log(2|Q|) + log(4T (α)/β)).
||x||1

Proof. Recall that by Theorem 3.28 that given k queries and a maximum number of above-threshold queries of c, Sparse Vector is (α, β)accurate for:9c(log k + log(4c/β))α=.
||x||1
Here, we have c = T (α) and k = 2|Q|. Note that we have set thethreshold T = 2α in the algorithm. First let us assume that the sparse
vector algorithm does not halt prematurely. In this case, by the utility
theorem, except with probability at most β, we have for all i such thatai = fi (Dt ): |fi (D)−fi (Dt )| ≤ T +α = 3α, as we wanted. Additionally,
for all i such that ai = a02i−1 or ai = a02i , we have |fi (D) − a0i | ≤ α.
Note that we also have for all i such that ai = a02i−1 or ai = a02i :|fi (D) − fi (D0 )| ≥ T − α = α, since T = 2α. Therefore, fi , ai form avalid step in a database update sequence. Therefore, there can be at
most c = T (α) such update steps, and so the Sparse vector algorithm
does not halt prematurely.
Similarly, we can prove a corresponding bound for (ε, δ)-privacy.
Theorem 5.15. For δ > 0, With probability at least 1 − β, for all
queries fi , OnlineIC returns an answer ai such that |fi (x) − ai | ≤ 3αfor any α such that:q√( 512 + 1)(ln(2|Q|) + ln 4Tβ(α) ) T (α) ln 2δ
α≥
||x||1
We can recover the bounds we proved for online multiplicative
weights by recalling that the MW database update algorithm is a|X |T (α)-database update algorithm for T (α) = 4 log. More generally,
α2
we have that any algorithm in the iterative construction framework
can be converted into an algorithm which works in the interactive
setting without loss in accuracy. (i.e., we could equally well plug in5.3. Connections

109

the median mechanism database update algorithm or the Perceptron
database update algorithm, or any other). Tantalizingly, this meansthat (at least in the iterative construction framework), there is no gap in
the accuracy achievable in the online vs. the offline query release models, despite the fact that the online model seems like it should be moredifficult.

5.3

Connections

5.3.1

Iterative construction mechanism and α-nets

The Iterative Construction mechanism is implemented differently thanthe Net mechanism, but at its heart, its analysis is still based on theexistence of small α-nets for the queries C. This connection is explicit
for the median mechanism, which is parameterized by a net, but it holds
for all database update algorithms. Note that the database output by
the iterative database construction algorithm is entirely determinedby the at most T functions f1 , . . . , fT ∈ Q fed into it, as selected by
the distinguisher while the algorithm is running. Each of these functions can be indexed by at most log |Q| bits, and so every database
output by the mechanism can be described using only T log |Q| bits.
In other words, the IC algorithm itself describes an α-net for Q ofsize at most Nα (Q) ≤ |Q|T . To obtain error α using the Multiplicative Weights algorithm as an iterative database constructor, itsuffices by Theorem 4.10 to take T = 4 log |X |/α2 , which gives us
22Nα (Q) ≤ |Q|4 log |X |/α = |X |4 log |Q|/α . Note that up to the factor of
4 in the exponent, this is exactly the bound we gave using a different αnet in Theorem 4.2! There, we constructed an α-net by considering allcollections of log |Q|/α2 data points, each of which could be indexed bylog |X | bits. Here, we considered all collections of log |X |/α2 functions
in Q, each of which could be indexed by log |Q| bits. Both ways, we
got α-nets of the same size! Indeed, we could just as well run the Net
mechanism using the α-net defined by the IC mechanism, to obtain thesame utility bounds. In some sense, one net is the “dual” of the other:
one is constructed of databases, the other is constructed of queries, yetboth nets are of the same size. We will see the same phenomenon in the

110

Generalizations“boosting for queries” algorithm in the next section — it too answers
a large number of linear queries using a data structure that is entirely
determined by a small “net” of queries.
5.3.2

Agnostic learning

One way of viewing what the IC mechanism is doing is that it isreducing the seemingly (information theoretically) more difficult problem of query release to the easier problem of query distinguishing or
learning. Recall that the distinguishing problem is to find the queryf ∈ Q which varies the most between two databases x and y. Recall
that in learning, the learner is given a collection of labeled examples(x1 , y1 ), . . . , (xm , ym ) ∈ X × {0, 1}, where yi ∈ {0, 1} is the label of xi .
If we view x as representing the positive examples in some large dataset, and y as representing the negative examples in the same data set,
then we can see that the problem of distinguishing is exactly the problem of agnostic learning. That is, a distinguisher finds the query thatbest labels the positive examples, even when there is no query in theclass that is guaranteed to perfectly label them (Note that in this setting, the same example can appear with both a positive and a negative
label — so the reduction still makes sense even when x and y are notdisjoint). Intuitively, learning should be an information-theoreticallyeasier problem than query release. The query release problem requiresthat we release the approximate value of every query f in some class Q,
evaluated on the database. In contrast, the agnostic learning problem
asks only that we return the evaluation and identity of a single query:the query that best labels the dataset. It is clear that information theoretically, the learning problem is no harder than the query releaseproblem. If we can solve the query release problem on databases x andy, then we can solve the distinguishing problem without any further
access to the true private dataset, merely by checking the approximate
evaluations of every query f ∈ Q on x and y that are made available
to us with our query release algorithm. What we have shown in thissection is that the reverse is true as well: given access to a private distinguishing or agnostic learning algorithm, we can solve the query releaseproblem by making a small (i.e., only log |X |/α2 ) number of calls to the5.3. Connections

111

private distinguishing algorithm, with no further access to the private
dataset.
What are the implications of this? It tells us that up to small factors,
the information complexity of agnostic learning is equal to the information complexity of query release. Computationally, the reduction is
only as efficient as our database update algorithm, which, depending
on our setting and algorithm, may or may not be efficient. But it tells
us that any sort of information theoretic bound we may prove for theone problem can be ported over to the other problem, and vice versa.
For example, most of the algorithms that we have seen (and most of
the algorithms that we know about!) ultimately access the dataset bymaking linear queries via the Laplace mechanism. It turns out that any
such algorithm can be seen as operating within the so-called statistical query model of data access, defined by Kearns in the context ofmachine learning. But agnostic learning is very hard in the statisticalquery model: even ignoring computational considerations, there is noalgorithm which can make only a polynomial number of queries to thedataset and agnostically learn conjunctions to subconstant error. For
query release this means that, in the statistical query model, there is
no algorithm for releasing conjunctions (i.e., contingency tables) thatruns in time polynomial in 1/α, where α is the desired accuracy level. If
there is a privacy preserving query release algorithm with this run-timeguarantee, it must operate outside of the SQ model, and therefore lookvery different from the currently known algorithms.
Because privacy guarantees compose linearly, this also tells us that(up to the possible factor of log |X |/α2 ) we should not expect to beable to privately learn to significantly higher accuracy than we canprivately perform query release, and vice versa: an accurate algorithm
for the one problem automatically gives us an accurate algorithm forthe other.
5.3.3

A game theoretic view of query release

In this section, we take a brief sojourn into game theory to interpret
some of the query release algorithms we have (and will see). Let us
consider an interaction between two adversarial players, Alice and Bob.

112

Generalizations

Alice has some set of actions she might take, A, and Bob has a set ofactions B. The game is played as follows: simultaneously, Alice picks
some action a ∈ A (possibly at random), and Bob picks some actionb ∈ B (possibly at random). Alice experiences a cost c(a, b) ∈ [−1, 1].
Alice wishes to play so as to minimize this cost, and since he is adversarial, Bob wishes to play so as to maximize this cost. This is what iscalled a zero sum game.
So how should Alice play? First, we consider an easier question.
Suppose we handicap Alice and require that she announce her randomized strategy to Bob before she play it, and allow Bob to respond
optimally using this information? If Alice announces that she will draw
some action a ∈ A according to a probability distribution DA , then Bob
will respond optimally so as to maximize Alice’s expected cost. Thatis, Bob will play:b∗ = arg max Ea∼DA [c(a, b)].
b∈B

Hence, once Alice announces her strategy, she knows what her cost
will be, since Bob will be able to respond optimally. Therefore, Alicewill wish to play a distribution over actions which minimizes her cost
once Bob responds. That is, Alice will wish to play the distribution DA
defined as:
DA = arg min max Ea∼D [c(a, b)].
D∈∆A b∈B

If she plays DA (and Bob responds optimally), Alice will experience thelowest possible cost that she can guarantee, with the handicap that she
must announce her strategy ahead of time. Such a strategy for Alice iscalled a min-max strategy. Let us call the cost that Alice achieves whenplaying a min-max strategy Alice’s value for the game, denoted v A :v A = min max Ea∼D [c(a, b)].
D∈∆A b∈B

We can similarly ask what Bob should play if we instead place him at
the disadvantage and force him to announce his strategy first to Alice.
If he does this, he will play the distribution DB over actions b ∈ Bthat maximizes Alice’s expected cost when Alice responds optimally.
We call such a strategy DB for Bob a max-min strategy. We can define5.3. Connections

113

Bob’s value for the game, v B , as the maximum cost he can ensure by
any strategy he might announce:v B = max min Eb∼D [c(a, b)].
D∈∆B a∈A

Clearly, v B ≤ v A , since announcing one’s strategy is only a handicap.
One of the foundational results of game theory is Von-Neumann’s
min-max Theorem, which states that in any zero sum game, v A = v B .2
In other words, there is no disadvantage to “going first” in a zero sum
game, and if players play optimally, we can predict exactly Alice’s cost:
it will be v A = v b ≡ v, which we refer to as the value of the game.
Definition 5.7. In a zero sum game defined by action sets A, B and acost function c : A × B → [−1, 1], let v be the value of the game. An
α-approximate min-max strategy is a distribution DA such that:max Ea∼DA [c(a, b)] ≤ v + αb∈BSimilarly, an α-approximate max-min strategy is a distribution DB
such that:min Eb∼DB [c(a, b)] ≥ v − αa∈A

If DA and DB are both α-approximate min-max and max-min strategies
respectively, then we say that the pair (DA , DB ) is an α-approximate
Nash equilibrium of the zero sum game.
So how does this relate to query release?
Consider a particular zero sum-game tailored to the problem of
releasing a set of linear queries Q over a data universe X . First, assume
without loss of generality that for every f ∈ Q, there is a query fˆ ∈ Qsuch that fˆ = 1−f (i.e., for each χ ∈ X , fˆ(χ) = 1−f (χ)). Define Alice’s
action set to be A = X and define Bob’s action set to be B = Q. We willrefer to Alice as the database player, and to Bob as the query player.
Finally, fixing a true private database x normalized to be a probability
distribution (i.e., kxk1 = 1), define the cost function c : A×B → [−1, 1]
2

Von Neumann is quoted as saying “As far as I can see, there could be no theoryof games ... without that theorem . . . I thought there was nothing worth publishing
until the Minimax Theorem was proved” [10].

114

Generalizations

to be: c(χ, f ) = f (χ) − f (x). Let us call this game the “Query ReleaseGame.”We begin with a simple observation:
Proposition 5.16. The value of the query release game is v = 0.
Proof. We first show that v A = v ≤ 0. Consider what happens if we let
the database player’s strategy correspond to the true database: DA = x.
Then we have:v A ≤ max Eχ∼DA [c(χ, f )]
f ∈B

= max
f ∈B

|X |
X

f (χi ) · xi − f (x)i=1= f (x) − f (x)= 0.
Next we observe that v = v B ≥ 0. For point of contradiction, assume
that v < 0. In other words, that there exists a distribution DA suchthat for all f ∈ Q
Eχ∼DA c(χ, f ) < 0.
Here, we simply note that by definition, if Eχ∼DA c(χ, f ) = c < 0 thenEχ∼DA c(χ, fˆ) = −c > 0, which is a contradiction since fˆ ∈ Q.
What we have established implies that for any distribution DA thatis an α-approximate min-max strategy for the database player, we havethat for all queries f ∈ Q: |Eχ∼DA f (χ) − f (x)| ≤ α. In other words, thedistribution DA can be viewed as a synthetic database that answers
every query in Q with α-accuracy.
How about for nonlinear queries? We can repeat the same argument
above if we change the query release game slightly. Rather than letting
the database player have strategies corresponding to universe elementsχ ∈ X , we let the database player have strategies corresponding todatabases themselves! Then, c(f, y) = |f (x) − f (y)|. Its not hard to
see that this game still has value 0 and that α-approximate min-max
strategies correspond to synthetic data which give α-accurate answers
to queries in Q.

5.4. Bibliographical notes

115

So how do we compute approximate min-max strategies in zerosum games? There are many ways! It is well known that if Alice plays
the game repeatedly, updating her distribution on actions using an
online-learning algorithm with a no-regret guarantee (defined in Section 11.2), and Bob responds at each round with an approximately-costmaximizing response, then Alice’s distribution will quickly converge toan approximate min-max strategy. Multiplicative weights is such analgorithm, and one way of understanding the multiplicative weights
mechanism is as a strategy for Alice to play in the query release gamedefined in this section. (The private distinguisher is playing the role ofBob here, picking at each round the query that corresponds to approximately maximizing Alice’s cost). The median mechanism is anothersuch algorithm, for the game in which Alice’s strategies correspond todatabases, rather than universe elements, and so is also computing anapproximate min-max solution to the query release game.
However, there are other ways to compute approximate equilibria
as well! For example, Bob, the query player, could play the game using
a no-regret learning algorithm (such as multiplicative weights), andAlice could repeatedly respond at each round with an approximatelycost-minimizing database! In this case, the average over the databasesthat Alice plays over the course of this experiment will converge toan approximate min-max solution as well. This is exactly what isbeing done in Section 6, in which the private base-sanitizer plays therole of Alice, at each round playing an approximately cost-minimizing
database given Bob’s distribution over queries.
In fact, a third way of computing an approximate equilibrium ofa zero-sum game is to have both Alice and Bob play according to noregret learning algorithms. We won’t cover this approach here, but
this approach has applications in guaranteeing privacy not just to the
database, but also to the set of queries being asked, and to privately
solving certain types of linear programs.

5.4

Bibliographical notes

The Iterative Construction Mechanism abstraction (together withthe perception based database update algorithm) was formalized by

116

Generalizations

Gupta et al. [39], generalizing the median mechanism of Roth andRoughgarden [74] (initially presented as an online algorithm), theonline private multiplicative weights mechanism of Hardt and Rothblum [44], and its offline variant of Gupta et al. [38]; see also Hardt
et al. [41]. All these algorithm can be seen to be instantiations. The
connection between query release and agnostic learning was observedin [38]. The observation that the median mechanism, when analyzed
using the composition theorems of Dwork et al. [32] for (ε, δ) privacy,
can be used to answer arbitrary low sensitivity queries is due to Hardt
and Rothblum. The game theoretic view of query release, along with its
applications to analyst privacy, is due to Hsu, Roth, and Ullman [48].

6
Boosting for Queries

In the previous sections, we have focused on the problem of private
query release in which we insist on bounding the worst-case error overall queries. Would our problem be easier if we instead asked only forlow error on average, given some distribution over the queries? In thissection, we see that the answer is no: given a mechanism which isable to solve the query release problem with low average error given
any distribution on queries, we can “boost” it into a mechanism whichsolves the query release problem to worst-case error. This both sheds
light on the difficulty of private query release, and gives us a new toolfor designing private query release algorithms.
Boosting is a general and widely used method for improving
the accuracy of learning algorithms. Given a set of labeled training
examples{(x1 , y1 ), (x2 , y2 ), . . . , (xm , ym )},where each xi is drawn from an underlying distribution D on a universeU, and each yi ∈ {+1, −1}, a learning algorithm produces a hypothesis
h : U → {+1, −1}. Ideally, h will not just “describe” the labeling on
the given samples, but will also generalize, providing a reasonably accurate method of classifying other elements drawn from the underlying
117

118

Boosting for Queries

distribution. The goal of boosting is to convert a weak base learner,
which produces a hypothesis that may do just a little better than random guessing, into a strong learner, which yields a very accurate predictor for samples drawn according to D. Many boosting algorithms
share the following basic structure. First, an initial (typically uniform)
probability distribution is imposed on the sample set. Computation
then proceeds in rounds. In each round t:
1. The base learner is run on the current distribution, denoted Dt ,producing a classification hypothesis ht ; and2. The hypotheses h1 , . . . , ht are used to re-weight the samples,defining a new distribution Dt+1 .
The process halts either after a predetermined number of rounds orwhen an appropriate combining of the hypotheses is determined to be
sufficiently accurate. Thus, given a base learner, the design decisions
for a boosting algorithm are (1) are how to modify the probability
distribution from one round to the next, and (2) how to combine thehypotheses {ht }t=1,...,T to form a final output hypothesis.
In this section we will use boosting on queries — that is, for the
purposes of the boosting algorithm the universe U is a set of queries
Q — to obtain an offline algorithm for answering large numbers of arbitrary low-sensitivity queries. This algorithm requires less space than the
median mechanism, and, depending on the base learner, is potentiallymore time efficient as well.
The algorithm revolves around a somewhat magical fact
(Lemma 6.5): if we can find a synopsis that provides accurate answers
on a few selected queries, then in fact this synopsis provides accurate
answers on most queries! We apply this fact to the base learner, whichsamples from a distribution on Q and produces as output a “weak”
synopsis that yields “good” answers for a majority of the weight in Q,
boosting, in a differentially private fashion, to obtain a synopsis thatis good for all of Q.
Although the boosting is performed over the queries, the privacy is
still for the rows of the database. The privacy challenge in boosting for
queries comes from the fact that each row in the database affects the6.1. The boosting for queries algorithm

119

answers to all the queries. This will manifest in the reweighting of thequeries: adjacent databases could cause radically different reweightings,
which will be observable in the generated ht that, collectively, will form
the synopsis.
The running time of the boosting procedure depends quasi-linearlyon the number |Q| of queries and on the running time of the basesynopsis generator, independent of the data universe size |X |. This
yields a new avenue for constructing efficient and accurate privacypreserving mechanisms, analogous to the approach enabled by boosting in the machine learning literature: an algorithm designer can tackle
the (potentially much easier) task of constructing a weak privacypreserving base synopsis generator, and automatically obtain a stronger
mechanism.

6.1

The boosting for queries algorithm

We will use the row representation for databases, outlined in Section 2,
where we think of the database as a multiset of rows, or elements of X .
Fix a database size n, a data universe X , and a query set Q = {q :X ∗ → R} of real-valued queries of sensitivity at most ρ.
We assume the existence of a base synopsis generator (in Section 6.2
we will see how to construct these). The property we will need of thebase generator, formulated next, is that, for any distribution D on thequery set Q, the output of base generator can be used for computing
accurate answers for a large fraction of the queries, where the “large
fraction” is defined in terms of the weights given by D. The base generator is parameterized by k, the number of queries to be sampled; λ,an accuracy requirement for its outputs; η, a measurement of “large”
describing what we mean by a large fraction of the queries, and β, afailure probability.
Definition 6.1 ((k, λ, η, β)-base synopsis generator). For a fixed
database size n, data universe X and query set Q, consider a synopsis
generator M, that samples k queries independently from a distribution
D on Q and outputs a synopsis. We say that M is a (k, λ, η, β)-base synopsis generator if for any distribution D on Q, with all but β probability

120

Boosting for Queries

over the coin flips of M, the synopsis S that M outputs is λ-accurate
for a (1/2 + η)-fraction of the mass of Q as weighted by D:
Pr [|q(S) − q(x)| ≤ λ] ≥ 1/2 + η.

q∼D

(6.1)

The query-boosting algorithm can be used for any class of queries
and any differentially private base synopsis generator. The running
time is inherited from the base synopsis generator. The booster invests
additional time that is quasi-linear in |Q|, and in particular its running
time does not depend directly on the size of the data universe.
To specify the boosting algorithm we will need to specify a stopping
condition, an aggregation mechanism, and an algorithm for updating
the current distribution on Q.
Stopping Condition. We will run the algorithm for a fixed number Tof rounds — this will be our stopping condition. T will be selected so
as to ensure sufficient accuracy (with very high probability); as we willsee, log |Q|/η 2 rounds will suffice.
Updating the Distribution. Although the distributions are neverdirectly revealed in the outputs, the base synopses A1 , A2 , . . . , AT
are revealed, and each Ai can in principle leak information about
the queries chosen, from Di , in constructing Ai . We therefore needto constrain the max-divergence between the probability distributions
obtained on neighboring databases. This is technically challenging
because, given Ai , the database is very heavily involved in constructing
Di+1 .
The initial distribution, D1 , will be uniform over Q. A standard
method for updating Dt is to increase the weight of poorly handled
elements, in our case, queries for which |q(x) − q(At )| > λ, by a fixedfactor, say, e, and decrease the weight of well-handled elements by thesame factor. (The weights are then normalized so as to sum to 1.) To
get a feel for the difficulty, let x = y ∪ {ξ}, and suppose that all queries
q are handled well by At when the database is y, but the additionof ξ causes this to fail for, say, a 1/10 fraction of the queries; that is,|q(y)−q(At )| ≤ λ for all queries q, but |q(x)−q(At )| > λ for some |Q|/10
queries. Note that, since At “does well” on 9/10 of the queries even

6.1. The boosting for queries algorithm

121

when the database is x, it could be returned from the base sanitizer nomatter which of x, y is the true data set. Our concern is with the effectsof the updating: when the database is y all queries are well handled andthere is no reweighting (after normalization), but when the databaseis x there is a reweighting: one tenth of the queries have their weights
increased, the remaining nine tenths have their weights decreased. Thisdifference in reweighting may be detected in the next iteration via At+1 ,which is observable, and which will be built from samples drawn fromrather different distributions depending on whether the database isx or y.
For example, suppose we start from the uniform distribution D1 .
(y)
(y)
(z)
Then D2 = D1 , where by Di we mean the distribution at round iwhen the database is z. This is because the weight of every query isdecreased by a factor of e, which disappears in the normalization. So(y)each q ∈ Q is assigned weight 1/|Q| in D2 . In contrast, when the
database is x the “unhappy” queries have normalized weight
e
|Q|
1 e .
9 1 1
10 |Q| e + 10 |Q|
(x)

(y)

Consider any such unhappy query q. The ratio D2 (q)/D2 (q) is
given by(x)
D2 (q)=(y)
D2 (q)

=

e
|Q|
9 1 1
1 e
+ 10
10 |Q| e
|Q|

1
|Q|

10 def= F ≈ 4.5085.
1 + e92

Now, ln F ≈ 1.506, and even though the choice of queries used inround 2 by the base generator are not explicitly made public, they
may be detectable from the resulting A2 , which is made public. Thus,
there is a potential privacy loss of up to 1.506 per query (of course,
we expect cancellations; we are simply trying to explain the source ofthe difficulty). This is partially addressed by ensuring that the numberof samples used by the base generator is relatively small, although westill have the problem that, over multiple iterations, the distributions
Dt may evolve very differently even on neighboring databases.

122

Boosting for Queries

The solution will be to attenuate the re-weighting procedure.
Instead of always using a fixed ratio either for increasing the weight(when the answer is “accurate”) or decreasing it (when it is not), we
set separate thresholds for “accuracy” (λ) and “inaccuracy” (λ + µ, for
an appropriately chosen µ that scales with the bit size of the outputof the base generator; see Lemma 6.5 below). Queries for which theerror is below or above these thresholds have their weight decreased
or increased, respectively, by a factor of e. For queries whose error lies
between these two thresholds, we scale the natural logarithm of theweight change linearly: 1 − 2(|q(x) − q(At )| − λ)/µ, so queries witherrors of magnitude exceeding λ + µ/2 increase in weight, and thosewith errors of magnitude less than λ + µ/2 decrease in weight.
The attenuated scaling reduces the effect of any individual on the
re-weighting of any query. This is because an individual can only affectthe true answer to a query — and thus also the accuracy of the basesynopsis generator’s output q(At ) — by a small amount, and the attenuation divides this amount by a parameter µ which will be chosen tocompensate for the kT samples chosen (total) from the T distributions
obtained over the course of the execution of the boosting algorithm.
This helps to ensure privacy. Intuitively, we view each of these kT samples as a “mini-mechanism.” We first bound the privacy loss of samplingat any round (Claim 6.4) and then bound the cumulative loss via thecomposition theorem.
The larger the gap (µ) between the thresholds for “accurate” and“inaccurate,” the smaller the effect of each individual on a query’s
weight can be. This means that larger gaps are better for privacy. For
accuracy, however, large gaps are bad. If the inaccuracy threshold islarge, we can only guarantee that queries for which the base synopsis
generator is very inaccurate have their weight substantially increased
during re-weighting. This degrades the accuracy guarantee of the boosting algorithm: the errors are roughly equal to the “inaccuracy” threshold (λ + µ).
Aggregation. For t ∈ [T ] we will run the base generator to obtain asynopsis At . The synopses will be aggregated by taking the median:given A1 , . . . , AT , the quantity q(x) is estimated by taking the T6.1. The boosting for queries algorithm

123

approximate values for q(x) computed using each of the Ai , and thencomputing their median. With this aggregation method we can show
accuracy for query q by arguing that a majority of the Ai , 1 ≤ i ≤ T
provide λ + µ accuracy (or better) for q. This implies that the medianvalue of the T approximations to q(x) will be within λ + µ of the true
value.
Notation.
1. Throughout the algorithm’s operation, we keep track of several
variables (explicitly or implicitly). Variables indexed by q ∈ Q
hold information pertaining to query q in the query set. Variables
indexed by t ∈ [T ], usually computed in round t, will be used toconstruct the distribution Dt+1 used for sampling in time periodt + 1.
2. For a predicate P we use [[P ]] to denote 1 if the predicate is trueand 0 if it is false.
3. There is a final tuning parameter α used in the algorithm. It will
be chosen (see Corollary 6.3 below) to have value
1 + 2η
.
α = α(η) = (1/2) ln
1 − 2η
The algorithm appears in Figure 6.1. The quantity ut,q in Step 2(2b)is the new, un-normalized, weight of the query. For the moment, let us
set α = 1 (just so that we can ignore any α factors). Letting aj,q be
the natural logarithm of the weight change in round j, 1 ≤ j ≤ t, the
new weight is given by:ut,q ← exp −tXaj,q  .

j=1

Thus, at the end of the previous step the un-normalized weight was
Pt−1
ut−1,q = exp(− j=1
aj,q ) and the update corresponds to multiplicationPby e−aj,t . When the sum tj=1 aj,q is large, the weight is small. Everytime a synopsis gives a very good approximation to q(x), we add 1 tothis sum; if the approximation is only moderately good (between λ and124

Boosting for Queries

Figure 6.1: Boosting for queries.

λ + µ/2), we add a positive amount, but less than 1. Conversely, when
the synopsis is very bad (worse than λ + µ accuracy), we subtract 1;
when it is barely acceptable (between λ + µ/2 and λ + µ), we subtracta smaller amount.
In the theorem below we see an inverse relationship between privacy
loss due to sampling, captured by εsample , and the gap µ between thethresholds for accurate and inaccurate.
Theorem 6.1. Let Q be a query family with sensitivity at most ρ. Foran appropriate setting of parameters, and with T = log |Q|/η 2 rounds,
the algorithm of Figure 6.1 is an accurate and differentially private
query-boosting algorithm:
1. When instantiated with a (k, λ, η, β)-base synopsis generator, theoutput of the boosting algorithm gives (λ + µ)-accurate answers
to all the queries in Q with probability at least 1 − T β, where
√ q
(6.2)
µ ∈ O(((log3/2 |Q|) k log(1/β)ρ)/(εsample · η 3 )).

6.1. The boosting for queries algorithm

125

2. If the base synopsis generator is (εbase , δbase )-differentially private, then the boosting algorithm is (εsample + T · εbase , δsample +T δbase )-differentially private.
Allowing the constant η to be swallowed up into the big-O nota√
tion, and taking ρ = 1 for simplicity, we get µ = O(((log3/2 |Q|) kplog(1/β))/εsample ). Thus we see that reducing the number k of input
queries needed by the base sanitizer improves the quality of the output.
Similarly, from the full statement of the theorem, we see that improving the generalization power of the base sanitizer, which corresponds tohaving a larger value of η (a bigger “strong majority”), also improves
the accuracy.
Proof of Theorem 6.1. We first prove accuracy, then privacy.
+
We introduce the notation a−t,q and at,q , satisfying+
1. a−t,q , at,q ∈ {−1, 1}; and−2. at,q ≤ at,q ≤ a+t,q .

Recall that a larger at,q indicates a higher quality of the approximationof the synopsis At for q(x).
1. a−t,q is 1 if At is λ-accurate on q, and −1 otherwise. To check that−a−t,q ≤ at,q , note that if at,q = 1 then At is λ-accurate for q, andso by definition at,q = 1 as well. If instead we have a−t,q = −1 thensince we always have at,q ∈ [−1, 1], we are done.
We will use the a−t,q to lower bound a measure of the qualityof the output of the base generator. By the promise of the basegenerator, At is λ-accurate for at least a 1/2 + η fraction of themass of Dt . Thus,rt ,X

Dt [q] · a−t,q ≥ (1/2 + η) − (1/2 − η) = 2η.

(6.3)

q∈Q

2. a+
t,q is −1 if At is (λ + µ)-inaccurate for q, and 1 otherwise. To+
check that at,q ≤ a+t,q , note that if at,q = −1 then At is (λ + µ)inaccurate for q, so by definition at,q = −1 as well. If insteada+t,q = 1 then since we always have at,q ∈ [−1, 1], we are done.
Thus a+t,q is positive if and only if At is at least minimallyadequately accurate for q. We will use the a+t,q to prove accuracy

126

Boosting for Queriesof the aggregation. When we sum the values a+t,q , we get a positive number if and only if the majority of the At are providing
passable — that is, within λ + µ — approximations to q(x). In
this case the median value will be within λ + µ.

Lemma 6.2. After T rounds of boosting, with all but T β probability,
the answers to all but an exp(−η 2 T )-fraction of the queries are (λ + µ)accurate.
Proof. In the last round of boosting, we have:uT,qDT +1 [q] =
.
ZT

(6.4)

Since at,q ≤ a+t,q we have:−αu+T,q , e

PT
t=1

a+
t,q

≤ e−α

PT
t=1

at,q

= uT,q .

(6.5)(The superscript “+” reminds us that this unweighted value was com+puted using the terms a+t,q .) Note that we always have uT,q ≥ 0. Combining Equations (6.4) and (6.5), for all q ∈ Q:
DT +1 [q] ≥

u+
T,q
ZT

.

(6.6)

Recalling that [[P ]] denotes the boolean variable that has value 1
if and only if the predicate P is true, we turn to examining the value[[A is (λ+µ)-inaccurate for q]]. If this predicate is 1, then it must be thecase that the majority of {Aj }Tj=1 are (λ + µ)-inaccurate, as otherwise
their median would be (λ + µ)-accurate.
P
From our discussion of the significance of the sign of Tt=1 a+t,q , wehave:
A is (λ + µ)-inaccurate for q ⇒TXa+t,q ≤ 0

t=1

⇔ e−α

PT
t=1

a+
t,q

⇔ u+
T,q ≥ 1Since u+T,q ≥ 0, We conclude that:[[A is (λ + µ)-inaccurate for q]] ≤ u+T,q≥1

6.1. The boosting for queries algorithm

127

Using this together with Equation (6.6) yields:
1 X +
1 X
[[A is (λ + µ)-inaccurate for q]] ≤u··|Q| q∈Q|Q| q∈Q T,q≤

1 X·
DT +1 [q] · ZT
|Q| q∈Q

=

ZT
.
|Q|

Thus the following claim completes the proof:
Claim 6.3. In round t of boosting, with all but tβ probability:
Zt ≤ exp(−η 2 · t) · |Q|
Proof. By definition of a base synopsis generator, with all but β probability, the synopsis generated is λ-accurate for at least a (1/2 + η)fraction of the mass of the distribution Dt . Recall that a−t,q ∈ {−1, 1}−
is 1 if and only if At is λ-accurate on q, and that at,q ≤ at,q and recallPfurther the quantity rt , q∈Q Dt [q] · a−t,q defined in Equation (6.3).
As discussed above, rt measures the “success” of the base synopsis generator in round t, where by “success” we mean the stricter notion of
λ-accuracy. As summarized in Equation (6.3), if a (1/2 + η)-fraction of
the mass of Dt is computed with λ-accuracy, then rt ≥ 2η. Now observealso that for t ∈ [T ], assuming the base sanitizer did not fail in round t:
Zt =

X

ut,q

q∈Q

=

X

ut−1,q · e−α·at,q

q∈Q

=

X

Zt−1 · Dt [q] · e−α·at,q

q∈Q

≤

X

−

Zt−1 · Dt [q] · e−α·at,qq∈Q= Zt−1 ·Xq∈Q

Dt [q] ·1 + a−
t,q
2

!

·e

−α

+

1 − a−
t,q
2

!

!

·e

α

(case analysis)

128

Boosting for Queries
Zt−1  α(e + e−α ) + rt (e−α − eα )2Zt−1  α(e + e−α ) + 2η(e−α − eα ) (rt ≥ 2η and (e−α − eα ) ≤ 0)≤2=

By simple calculus we see that (eα +e−α )+2η(e−α −eα ) is minimizedwhen
1 + 2η
.
α = (1/2) ln
1 − 2η
Plugging this into the recurrence, we getqZt ≤ ( 1 − 4η 2 )t |Q| ≤ exp(−2η 2 t)|Q|.
This completes the proof of Lemma 6.2.
The lemma implies that accuracy for all queries simultaneously canbe achieved by setting
ln |Q|T >.
η2Privacy. We will show that the entire sequence (S1 , A1 , . . . , ST , AT )can be output while preserving differential privacy. Note that this isstronger than we need — we do not actually output the sets S1 , . . . , ST .
By our adaptive composition theorems, the privacy of each Ai will be
guaranteed by the privacy guarantees of the base synopsis generator,
together with the fact that Si−1 was computed in a differentially private
way. Therefore, it suffices to prove that given that (S1 , A1 , . . . , Si , Ai )is differentially private, Si+1 is as well. We can then combine the privacy parameters using our composition theorems to compute a final
guarantee.
ρLemma 6.4. Let ε∗ = 4αTµ . For all i ∈ [T ], once (S1 , A1 , . . . , Si , Ai ) is
fixed, the computation of each element of Si+1 is (ε∗ , 0)-differentiallyprivate.

Proof. Fixing A1 , . . . , Ai , for every j ≤ i, the quantity dq,j has sensitivity ρ, since Aj (q) is database independent (because Aj is fixed), and6.1. The boosting for queries algorithm

129

every q ∈ Q has sensitivity bounded by ρ. Therefore, for every j ≤ i,aj,q is 2ρ/µ sensitive by construction, and soidef X

gi (q) =

aj,q

j=1
def

has sensitivity at most 2iρ/µ ≤ 2T ρ/µ. Then ∆gi = 2T ρ/µ is an upperbound on the sensitivity of gi .
To argue privacy, we will show that the selection of queries for Si+1
is an instance of the exponential mechanism. Think of −gi (q) as theutility of a query q during the selection process at round i + 1. The
exponential mechanism says that to achieve (ε∗ , 0)-differential privacy
we should choose q with probability proportional toε∗exp −gi (q)
.
2∆gi




Since ε∗ /2∆gi = α and the algorithm selects q with probability proportional to e−αgi (q) , we see that this is exactly what the algorithm
does!
We bound the privacy loss of releasing the Si s by treating each selection of a query as a “mini-mechanism” that, over the course of T roundsof boosting, is invoked kT times. By Lemma 6.4 each mini-mechanismis (4αT ρ/µ, 0)-differentially private. By Theorem 3.20, for all β > 0
the composition of kT mechanisms, each of which is (α4T ρ/µ, 0)differentially private, is (εsample , δsample )-differentially private, wheredefεsample =q



2kT log(1/δsample )(α4T ρ/µ) + kT

α4T ρ
µ

2

.

(6.7)

Our total privacy loss comes from the composition of T calls to thebase sanitizer and the cumulative loss from the kT samples. We conclude that the boosting algorithm in its entirety is: (εboost , δboost )differentially private, where
εboost = T εbase + εsample
δboost = T δbase + δsample

130

Boosting for Queries

To get the parameters claimed in the statement of the theorem, we can
take:
√ q
µ ∈ O((T 3/2 k log(1/β)αρ)/εsample ).
(6.8)

6.2

Base synopsis generators

Algorithm SmallDB (Section 4) is based on the insight that a small
randomly selected subset of database rows provides good answers tolarge sets of fractional counting queries. The base synopsis generators
described in the current section have an analogous insight: a small
synopsis that gives good approximations to the answers to a small
subset of queries also yields good approximations to most queries. Bothof these are instances of generalization bounds. In the remainder of thissection we firs prove a generalization bound and then use it to constructdifferentially base synopsis generators.
6.2.1

A generalization boundWe have a distribution D over a large set Q of queries to be approximated. The lemma below says that a sufficiently small synopsis thatgives sufficiently good approximations to the answers of a randomly
selected subset S ⊂ Q of queries, sampled according to the distribution
D on Q, will, with high probability over the choice of S, also give good
approximations to the answers to most queries in Q (that is, to mostof the mass of Q, weighted by D). Of course, to make any sense thesynopsis must include a method of providing an answer to all queries
in Q, not just the subset S ⊆ Q received as input. Our particular
generators, described in Sections 6.2.2 and Theorem 6.6 will produce
synthetic databases; to answer any query one can simply apply thequery to the synthetic database, but the lemma will be stated in fullgenerality.
Let R(y, q) denote the answer given by the synopsis y (when used as
input for the reconstruction procedure) on query q. A synopsis y λ-fits a
database x w.r.t a set S of queries if maxq∈S |R(y, q)−q(x)| ≤ λ. Let |y|6.2. Base synopsis generators

131

denote the number of bits needed to represent y. Since our synopses will
be synthetic databases, |y| = N log2 |X | for some appropriately chosen
number N of universe elements. The generalization bound shows that
if y λ-fits x with respect to a large enough (larger than |y|) randomly
chosen set S of queries sampled from a distribution D, then with highprobability y λ-fits x for most of the mass of D.
Lemma 6.5. Let D be an arbitrary distribution on a query set Q ={q : X ∗ → R}. For all m ∈ N , γ ∈ (0, 1), η ∈ [0, 1/2), let a =2(log(1/γ) + m)/(m(1 − 2η)). Then with probability at least 1 − γ overthe choice of S ∼ Da·m , every synopsis y of size at most m bits that
λ-fits x with respect to the query set S, also λ-fits x with respect to atleast a (1/2 + η)-fraction of D.
Before proving the lemma we observe that a is a compression factor:
we are squeezing the answers to am queries into an m-bit output, solarger a corresponds to more compression. Typically, this means better
generalization, and indeed we see that if a is larger then, keeping m andγ fixed, we would be able to have larger η. The lemma also says that,for any given output size m, the number of queries needed as input toobtain an output that does well on a majority (1/2 + η fraction) of D
is only O(log(1/γ) + m). This is interesting because a smaller numberof queries k needed by the base generator leads, via the privacy loss
εsample due to sampling of kT queries and its inverse relationship to theslackness µ (Equation 6.7), to improved accuracy of the output of theboosting algorithm.
Proof of Lemma 6.5. Fix a set of queries S ⊂ Q chosen independently
according to Da·m . Examine an arbitrary m-bit synopsis y. Note that yis described by an m-bit string. Let us say y is bad if |R(y, q) − q(x)| >λ for at least a (log(1/γ) + m)/(a · m) fraction of D, meaning that
Prq∼D [|R(y, q) − q(x)| > λ] ≥ (log(1/γ) + m)/(a · m).
In other words, y is bad if there exists a set Qy ⊂ Q of fractional
weight at least (log(1/γ) + m)/(a · m) such that |R(y, q) − q(x)| > λ forq ∈ Qy . For such a y, what is the probability that y gives λ-accurate
answers for every q ∈ S? This is exactly the probability that none of

132

Boosting for Queries

the queries in S is in Qy , or
(1 − (log(1/γ) + m)/(a · m))a·m ≤ e−(log(1/γ)+m) ≤ γ · 2−m
Taking a union bound over all 2m possible choices for y, the probability
that there exists an m-bit synopsis y that is accurate on all the queriesin S but inaccurate on a set of fractional weight (log(1/β) + m)/(a · m)
is at most γ. Letting k = am = |S| we see that it is sufficient tohavea>2(log(1/γ) + m).
m · (1 − 2η)(6.9)

This simple lemma is extremely powerful. It tells us that whenconstructing a base generator at round t, we only need to worry about
ensuring good answers for the small set of random queries sampledfrom Dt ; doing well for most of Dt will happen automatically!
6.2.2

The base generator

Our first generator works by brute force. After sampling a set S of kqueries independently according to a distribution D, the base generator will produce noisy answers for all queries in S via the Laplacemechanism. Then, making no further use of the actual database, thealgorithm searches for any database of size n for which these noisy
answers are sufficiently close, and outputs this database. Privacy will
be immediate because everything after the k invocations of the Laplacemechanism is in post-processing. Thus the only source of privacy loss isthe cumulative loss from these k invocations of the Laplace mechanism,
which we know how to analyze via the composition theorem. Utility will
follow from the utility of the Laplace mechanism — which says that weare unlikely to have “very large” error on even one query — coupledwith the fact that the true database x is an n-element database thatfits these noisy responses.1
1

This argument assumes the size n of the database is known. Alternatively we
can include a noisy query of the form “How many rows are in the database?” andexhaustively search all databases of size close to the response to this query.

6.2. Base synopsis generators

133

Theorem 6.6 (Base Synopsis Generator for Arbitrary Queries). For any
data universe X , database size n, and class Q : {X ∗ → R} of queriesof sensitivity at most ρ, for any εbase , δbase > 0, there exists an(εbase , δbase )-differentially private (k, λ, η = 1/3, β)-base synopsis generator for Q, where k = am > 6(m+log(2/β)) = 6(n log |X |+log(2/β))pand λ > 2b(log k + log(2/β)), where b = ρ am log(1/δbase )/εbase .
The running time of the generator is|X |n · poly(n, log(1/β), log(1/εbase ), log(1/δbase )).
Proof. We first describe the base generator at a high level, then determine the values for k and λ. The synopsis y produced by the basegenerator will be a synthetic database of size n. Thus m = |y| =n · log |X |. The generator begins by choosing a set S of k queries,
sampled independently according to D. It computes a noisy answer
for each query q ∈ S using the Laplace mechanism, adding to eachtrue answer an independent draw from Lap(b) for an appropriate b tod
be determined later. Let {q(x)}q∈Q be the collection of noisy answers.
The generator enumerates over all |X |n databases of size n, and outputs the lexicographically first database y such that for every q ∈ S
d ≤ λ/2. If no such database is found, it outputs
we have |q(y) − q(x)|d − q(x)| < λ/2 and⊥ instead, and we say it fails. Note that if |q(x)d|q(y) − q(x)| < λ/2, then |q(y) − q(x)| < λ.
There are two potential sources of failure for our particular generator. One possibility is that y fails to generalize, or is bad as defined in
the proof of Lemma 6.5. A second possibility is that one of the samples
from the Laplace distribution is of excessively large magnitude, whichmight cause the generator to fail. We will choose our parameters so
as to bound the probability of each of these events individually by atmost β/2.
Substituting η = 1/3 and m = n log |X| into Equation 6.9 showsthat taking a > 6(1 + log(2/β)/m) suffices in order for the probabilityof failure due to the choice of S to be bounded by β/2. Thus, taking
k = am > 6(m + log(2/β)) = 6(n log |X | + log(2/β)) suffices.
We have k queries of sensitivity at most ρ. Using the Laplacepmechanism with parameter b = 2 2k log(1/δbase )ρ/εbase , ensures thatpeach query incurs privacy loss at most εbase / 2k ln(1/δbase ), which by

134

Boosting for Queries

Corollary 3.21 ensures that the entire procedure will be (εbase , δbase )differentially private.
We will choose λ so that the probability that any draw from Lap(b)has magnitude exceeding λ/2 is at most β/2. Conditioned on the eventthat all k draws have magnitude at most λ we know that the input
database itself will λ-fit our noisy answers, so the procedure will not fail.
Recall that the concentration properties of the Laplace distribution
ensure that with probability at least 1−et a draw from Lap(b) will havemagnitude bounded by tb. Setting λ/2 = tb, the probability that a given
draw will have magnitude exceeding λ/2 is bounded by e−t = e−λ/2b .
To ensure that none of the k draws has magnitude exceeding λ/2 it
suffices, by a union bound, to haveke−λ/2b < β/2⇔ eλ/2b > k2
β⇔ λ/2 > b(log k + log(2/β))⇔ λ > 2b(log k + log(2/β)).
The Special Case of Linear Queries. For the special case of linear queries it is possible to avoid the brute force search for asmall database. The technique requires time that is polynomial in(|Q|, |X |, n, log(1/β)). We will focus on the case of counting queries
and sketch the construction.
As in the case of the base generator for arbitrary queries, the basegenerator begins by selecting a set S of k = am queries according to
D and computing noisy answers using Laplace noise. The generator for
linear queries then runs a syntheticizer on S which, roughly speaking,transforms any synopsis giving good approximations to any set R of
queries into a synthetic database yielding approximations of similar
quality on the set R. The input to the syntheticizer will be the noisy
values for the queries in S, that is, R = S. (Recall that when we modify
the size of the database we always think in terms of the fractionalversion of the counting queries: “What fraction of the database rows
satisfies property P ?”)6.2. Base synopsis generators

135

The resulting database may be quite large, meaning it may
have many rows. The base generator then subsamples only n0 =(log k log(1/β))/α2 of the rows of the synthetic database, creating asmaller synthetic database that with probability at least 1 − β has
α-accuracy with respect to the answers given by the large synthetic
database. This yields an m = ((log k log(1/β))/α2 ) log |X |-bit synopsis
that, by the generalization lemma, with probability (1 − log(1/β)) overthe choice of the k queries, answers well on a (1/2 + η) fraction of Q
(as weighted by D).
As in the case of the base generator for arbitrary queries, we requirek = am > 6 log(1/β) + 6m. Taking α2 = (log Q)/n we get thatlog k log(1/β) log |X |α2
log |X |= 6 log(1/β) + 6n log k log(1/β).
log |Q|k > 6 log(1/β) + 6

The syntheticizer is nontrivial. Its properties are summarized by
the following theorem.
Theorem 6.7. Let X be a data universe, Q a set of fractional counting
queries, and A an (ε, δ)-differentially private synopsis generator withutility (α, β, 0) and arbitrary output. Then there exists a syntheticizer
A0 that is (ε, δ)-differentially private and has utility (3α, β, 0). A0 outputs a (potentially large) synthetic database. Its running time is polynomial in the running time of A and (|X |, |Q|, 1/α, log(1/β)).
In our case, A is the Laplace mechanism, and the synopsis is simply the set of noisy answers. The composition theorem says that for A
to be (εbase , δbase )-differentially private the parameter to the Laplacepmechanism should be ρ/(εbase / 2k log(1/δbase )). For fractional counting queries the sensitivity is ρ = 1/n.
Thus, when we apply the Theorem we will have an α of orderp( k log(1/β)/εbase )ρ. Here, ρ is the sensitivity. For counting queries
it is 1, but we will shift to fractional counting queries, so ρ = 1/n.
Proof Sketch for Theorem 6.7. Run A to get (differentially private)(fractional) counts on all the queries in R. We will then use linear programming to find a low-weight fractional database that approximates

136

Boosting for Queries

these fractional counts, as explained below. Finally, we transform thisfractional database into a standard synthetic database by rounding thefractional counts.
The output of A yields a fractional count for each query q ∈ Q. The
input database x is never accessed again and so A0 is (ε, δ)-differentiallyprivate. Let v be the resulting vector of counts, i.e., vq is the fractionalcount that A’s output gives on query q. With probability 1 − β, all of
the entries in v are α-accurate.
A “fractional” database z that approximates these counts is
obtained as follows. Recall the histogram representation of a database,where for each element in the universe X the histogram contains thenumber of instances of this element in the database. Now, for everyi ∈ X , we introduce a variable ai ≥ 0 that will “count” the (fractional)
number of occurrences of i in the fractional database z. We will impose
the constraintXai = 1.

i∈X

We represent the count of query q in z as the sum of the count of items
i that satisfy q:Xaii∈X s.t. q(i)=1

We want all of these counts to be within a an additive α accuracy of
the respective counts in vq . Writing this as a linear inequality we get:(vq − α)

X
i∈X

ai ≤

X
i∈X s.t. q(i)=1

ai ≤ (vq + α)

X

ai .

i∈X

When the counts are all α-accurate with respect to the counts in vc , itis also the case that (with probability 1 − β) they are all 2α-accuratewith respect to the true counts on the original database x.
We write a linear program with two such constraints for each query(a total of 2|Q| constraints). A0 tries to find a fractional solution tothis linear program. To see that such a solution exists, observe that the
database x itself is α-close to the vector of counts v, and so there exists
a solution to the linear program (in fact even an integer solution), andhence A0 will find some fractional solution.

6.2. Base synopsis generators

137

We conclude that A0 can generate a fractional database with
(2α, β, 0)-utility, but we really want a synthetic (integer) database. Totransform the fractional database into an integer one, we round downeach ai , for i ∈ X , to the closest multiple of α/|X |, this changes eachfractional count by at most a α/|X | additive factor, and so the rounded
counts have (3α, β, 0) utility. Now we can treat the rounded fractional
database (which has total weight 1), as an integer synthetic databaseof (polynomial) size at most |X |/α.
Recall that in our application of Theorem 6.7 we defined A
to be the mechanism that adds Laplace noise with parameterpρ/(εbase / 2k log(1/δbase )). We have k draws, so by takingqα0 = ρ 2k log(1/δbase )(log k + log(1/β))
we have that A is (α0 , β, 0)-accurate. For the base generator we chose
error α2 = (log |Q|)/n. If the output of the syntheticizer is too large,
we subsample
log k log(1/β)
log |Q| log(1/β)=
2αα2rows. With probability 1 − β the resulting database maintainsppO(ρ (log |Q|)/n + ( 2k log(1/δbase )/εbase )(log k + log(1/β))-accuracy
on all of the concepts simultaneously.
Finally, the base generator can fail if the choice of queries S ∈ Dk
does not lead to good generalization. With the parameters we havechosen this occurs with probability at most β, leading to a total failure
probability of the entire generator of 3β.
n0 =Theorem 6.8 (Base Generator for Fractional Linear Queries). For any
data universe X , database size n, and class Q : {X n → R} of fractional
linear queries (with sensitivity at most 1/n), for any εbase , δbase > 0,
there exists an (εbase , δbase )-differentially private (k, λ, 1/3, 3β)-basesynopsis generator for Q, wheren log(|X |) log(1/β)
k=Olog |Q|

λ=O

log(1/β) q√
log |Q| +nslog|X |
1·
log|Q| εbase

!!

.

138

Boosting for Queries

The running time of the base generator is poly(|X |, n, log(1/β),log(1/εbase )).
The sampling bound used here is the same as that used in theconstruction of the SmallDB mechanism, but with different parameters.
Here we are using these bounds for a base generator in a complicatedboosting algorithm with a very small query set; there we are using themfor a single-shot generation of a synthetic database with an enormous
query set.
6.2.3

Assembling the ingredients

The total error comes from the choice of µ (see Equation 6.2) and λ,the accuracy parameter for the based generator.
Let us recall Theorem 6.1:
Theorem 6.9 (Theorem 6.1). Let Q be a query family with sensitivity at most ρ. For an appropriate setting of parameters, and with
T = log |Q|/η 2 rounds, the algorithm of Figure 6.1 is an accurate anddifferentially private query-boosting algorithm:
1. When instantiated with a (k, λ, η, β)-base synopsis generator, theoutput of the boosting algorithm gives (λ + µ)-accurate answers
to all the queries in Q with probability at least 1 − T β, where√ qµ ∈ O(((log3/2 |Q|) k log(1/β)ρ)/(εsample · η 3 )). (6.10)
2. If the base synopsis generator is (εbase , δbase )-differentially private, then the boosting algorithm is ((εsample + T · εbase ), T (β +δbase ))-differentially private.
By Equation 6.7,
def

εsample =q

2kT log(1/β)(α4T ρ/µ) + kT



α4T ρ
µ

2

,

where α = (1/2)(ln(1 + 2η)(1 − 2η)) ∈ O(1). We always have T =(log |Q|)/η 2 , so substituting in this value into the above equation we
see that the bound√ qµ ∈ O(((log3/2 |Q|) k log(1/β)ρ)/(εsample · η 3 ))in the statement of the theorem is acceptable.

6.3. Bibliographical notes

139

For the case of arbitrary queries, with η a constant, we have


λ∈O

ρ



q

εbase

( n log |X | log(1/δbase )(log(n log |X |) + log(2/β))) .

Now, εboost = T εbase + εsample . Set these two terms equal, so T εbase =εboost /2 = εsample , whence we can replace the 1/εbase term with
2T /εboost = (log |Q|/η 2 )/2εboost . Now our terms for λ and µ have similar denominators, since η is constant. We may therefore conclude thatthe total error is bounded by:p

λ + µ ∈ Õn log |X |ρ log3/2 |Q|(log(1/β))3/2
εboost!

.

With similar reasoning, for the case of fractional counting queries
we get!
plog |X | log |Q| log(1/β)3/2√.
λ + µ ∈ Õεboost n
To convert to a bound for ordinary, non-fractional, counting queries wemultiply by n to obtainp

λ + µ ∈ Õ

6.3

n log |X | log |Q| log(1/β)3/2
εboost!

.

Bibliographical notes

The boosting algorithm (Figure 6.1) is a variant of AdaBoost algorithmof Schapire and Singer [78]. See Schapire [77] for an excellent surveyof boosting, and the textbook “Boosting” by Freund and Schapire [79]for a thorough treatment. The private boosting algorithm covered inthis section is due to Dwork et al. [32], which also contains the basegenerator for linear queries. This base generator, in turn, relies on thesyntheticizer of Dwork et al. [28]. In particular, Theorem 6.7 comesfrom [28]. Dwork, Rothblum, and Vadhan also addressed differentiallyprivate boosting in the usual sense.

7
When Worst-Case Sensitivity is AtypicalIn this section, we briefly describe two general techniques, both enjoying
unconditional privacy guarantees, that can often make life easier for thedata analyst, especially when dealing with a function that has arbitrary,or difficult to analyze, worst-case sensitivity. These algorithms are mostuseful in computing functions that, for some exogenous reason, theanalyst has reason to believe are “usually” insensitive in practice.

7.1

Subsample and aggregate

The Subsample and Aggregate technique yields a method for “forcing”
the computation of a function f (x) to be insensitive, even for an arbitrary function f . Proving privacy will be trivial. Accuracy depends onproperties of the function f and the specific data set x; in particular,
if f (x) can be accurately estimated, with high probability, on f (S),where S is a random subset of the elements in x, then accuracy should
be good. Many maximum likelihood statistical estimators enjoy thisproperty on “typical” data sets — this is why these estimators are
employed in practice.

140

7.1. Subsample and aggregate

141

Figure 7.1: Subsample and Aggregate with a generic differentially private aggregation algorithm M.

In Subsample and Aggregate, the n rows of the database x are
randomly partitioned into m blocks B1 , . . . , Bm , each of size n/m. The
function f is computed exactly, without noise, independently on eachblock. The intermediate outcomes f (B1 ), . . . , f (Bm ) are then combined
via a differentially private aggregation mechanism — typical examples
include standard aggregations, such as the α-trimmed mean,1 the Winsorized mean,2 and the median, but there are no restrictions — andthen adding Laplace noise scaled to the sensitivity of the aggregation
function in question; see Figure 7.1.
The key observation in Subsample and Aggregate is that any single
element can affect at most one block, and therefore the value of justa single f (Bi ). Thus, changing the data of any individual can change
at most a single input to the aggregation function. Even if f is arbitrary, the analyst chooses the aggregation function, and so is free tochoose one that is insensitive, provided that choice is independent of thedatabase! Privacy is therefore immediate: For any δ ≥ 0 and any function f , if the aggregation mechanism M is (ε, δ)-differentially private
1
The α-trimmed mean is the mean after the top and bottom α fraction of the
inputs have been discarded.
2
The Winsorized mean is similar to the α-trimmed mean except that, rather thanbeing discarded, the top and bottom α fraction are replaced with the most extreme
remaining values.

142

When Worst-Case Sensitivity is Atypicalthen so is the Subsample and Aggregate technique when instantiatedwith f and M.3
Utility is a different story, and it is frustratingly difficult to argueeven for the case in which data are plentiful and large random subsets are very likely to give similar results. For example, the data may
be labeled training points in high dimensional space and the function
is logistic regression, which produces a vector v and labels a point p
with +1 if and only if p · v ≥ T for some (say, fixed) threshold T .
Intuitively, if the samples are sufficiently plentiful and typical then all
blocks should yield similar vectors v. The difficulty comes in getting agood bound on the worst-case sensitivity of the aggregation function —we may need to use the size of the range as a fallback. Nonetheless,some nice applications are known, especially in the realm of statistical estimators, where, for example, it can be shown that, under theassumption of “generic normality,” privacy can be achieved at no additional cost in statistical efficiency (roughly, accuracy as the numberof samples grows). We do not define generic normality here, but notethat estimators fitting these assumptions include the maximum likelihood estimator for “nice” parametric families of distributions such as
gaussians, and maximum-likelihood estimators for linear regression andlogistic regression.
Suppose the function f has a discrete range of cardinality m, say,[m]. In this case Subsample and Aggregate will need to aggregate a setof b elements drawn from [m], and we can use Report Noisy Arg-Max tofind the most popular outcome. This approach to aggregation requiresb ≥ log m to obtain meaningful results even when the intermediateoutcomes are unanimous. We will see an alternative below with nosuch requirement.
Example 7.1 (Choosing a Model). Much work in statistics and machinelearning addresses the problem of model selection: Given a data set anda discrete collection of “models,” each of which is a family of probability distributions, the goal is to determine the model that best “fits”
3

The choice of aggregation function can even depend on the database, but the
selection must be made in a differentially private fashion. The privacy cost is thenthe cost of composing the choice operation with the aggregation function.

7.2. Propose-test-Release143

the data. For example, given a set of labeled d-dimensional data, thecollection of models might be all subsets of at most s  d features, andthe goal is to find the set of features that best permits prediction of thelabels. The function f might be choosing the best model from the given
set of of m models, a process known as model fitting, via an arbitrary
learning algorithm. Aggregation to find the most popular value could
be done via Report Noisy Max, which also yields an estimate of its
popularity.
Example 7.2 (Significant Features). This is a special case of model fitting. The data are a collection of points in Rd and the function is thevery popular LASSO, which yields as output a list L ∈ [d]s of at mosts  d significant features. We can aggregate the output in two ways:
feature by feature — equivalent to running d executions of Subsample
and Aggregate, one for each feature, each with a range of size 2 — or
on the set as a whole, in which case the cardinality of the range is ds .

7.2

Propose-test-Release

At this point one might ask: what is the meaning of the aggregation if
there is not substantial agreement among the blocks? More generally,
for any reasonably large-scale statistical analysis in real life, we expect
the results to be fairly stable, independent of the presence or absenceof any single individual. Indeed, this is the entire intuition behind thesignificance of a statistic and underlying the utility of differential privacy. We can even go further, and argue that if a statistic is not stable,
we should have no interest in computing it. Often, our database willin fact be a sample from a larger population, and our true goal is not
to compute the value of the statistic on the database itself, but rather
estimate it for the underlying population. Implicitly, therefore, when
computing a statistic we are already assuming that the statistic is stable under subsampling!
Everything we have seen so far has provided privacy even on very
“idiosyncratic” datasets, for which “typically” stable algorithms my behighly unstable. In this section we introduce a methodology, ProposeTest-Release, which is motivated by the philosophy that if there is144

When Worst-Case Sensitivity is Atypicalinsufficient stability then the analysis can be abandoned because theresults are not in fact meaningful. That is, the methodology allows
the analyst to check that, on the given dataset, the function satisfies
some “robustness” or “stability” criterion and, if it does not, to halt
the analysis.
The goal of our first application of Propose-Test-Release is to comeup with a variant of the Laplace mechanism that adds noise scaled
to something strictly smaller than the sensitivity of a function. This
leads to the notion of local sensitivity, which is defined for a (function,
database) pair, say, (f, x). Quite simply, the local sensitivity of f withrespect to x is the amount by which the f (y) can differ from f (x) for
any y adjacent to x.
Definition 7.1 (Local Sensitivity). The local sensitivity of a function
f : X n → Rk with respect to a database x is:max

y adjacent to x

kf (x) − f (y)k1 .

The Propose-Test-Release approach is to first propose a bound,say b, on local sensitivity — typically the data analyst has some ideaof what this should be — and then run a differentially private test
to ensure that the database is “far” from any database for which thisbound fails to hold. If the test is passed, then the sensitivity is assumed
to be bounded by b, and a differentially private mechanism such as, forexample, the Laplace mechanism with parameter b/, is used to release
the (slightly) noisy response to the query.
Note that we can view this approach as a two-party algorithm where
one party plays an honest data analyst and the other is the Laplacemechanism. There is an interplay between the honest analyst and themechanism in which the algorithm asks for an estimate of the sensitivity and then “instructs” the mechanism to use this estimated sensitivity
in responding to subsequent queries. Why does it need to be so complicated? Why can’t the mechanism simply add noise scaled to the local
sensitivity without playing this private estimation game? The reason
is that the local sensitivity may itself be sensitive. This fact, combinedwith some auxiliary information about the database, can lead to privacy problems: the adversary may know that the database is one of x,7.2. Propose-test-Release

145

which has very low local sensitivity for the computation in question,
and a neighboring y, for which the function has very high local sensitivity. In this case the adversary may be able to guess rather accurately
which of x and y is the true database. For example, if f (x) = f (y) = s
and the reponse is far from s, then the adversary would guess y.
This is captured by the math of differential privacy. There are neighboring instances of the median function which have the same median,say, m, but arbitrarily large gaps in the local sensitivity. Suppose theresponse R to the median query is computed via the Laplace mechanismwith noise scaled to the local sensitivity. When the database is x the probability mass is close to m, because the sensitivity is small, but when the
database is y the mass is far flung, because the sensitivity is large. As
an extreme case, suppose the local sensitivity on x is exactly zero, forexample, X = {0, 106 }, n is even, and x, which has size n + 1, contains 1 + n/2 zeros. Then the median of x is zero and the local sensitivityof the median, when the database is x, is 0. In contrast, the neighboring database y has size n, contains n/2 zeros, has median zero (we havedefined median to break ties in favor of the smaller value), and the local
sensitivity of the median, when the database is y, is 106 . On x all the massof the Laplace mechanism (with parameter 0/ε = 0) is concentrated on
the single
0; but on y the probability distribution has standard devi√ point
6
ation 2 · 10 . This destroys all hope of differential privacy.
To test that the database is “far” from one with local sensitivity
greater than the proposed bound b, we may pose the query: “What isthe distance of the true database to the closest one with local sensitivity exceeding b?” Distance to a fixed set of databases is a (global)
sensitivity 1 query, so this test can be run in a differentially private
fashion by adding noise Lap(1/ε) to the true answer. To err on the sideof privacy, the algorithm can compare this noisy distance to a conservative threshold — one that is only negligibly likely to be exceeded due
to a freak event of very large magnitude Laplace noise. For example,
if the threshold used is, say, ln2 n, the probability of a false positive(passing the test when the local sensitivity in fact exceeds b) is at mostO(n−ε ln n ), by the properties of the Laplace distribution. Because of
the negligible probability of a false positive, the technique cannot yield(ε, 0)-differential privacy for any ε.

146When Worst-Case Sensitivity is Atypical

To apply this methodology to consensus on blocks, as in our discussion of Subsample and Aggregate, view the intermediate resultsf (B1 ), . . . , f (Bm ) as a data set and consider some measure of the concentration of these values. Intuitively, if the values are tightly concentrated then we have consensus among the blocks. Of course, we stillneed to find the correct notion of concentration, one that is meaningful
and that has a differentially private instantiation. In a later section
we will define and weave together two notions of stability that seem
relevant to Subsample and Aggregate: insensitivity (to the removal or
addition of a few data points) and stability under subsampling, capturing the notion that a subsample should yield similar results to thefull data set.
7.2.1

Example: the scale of a dataset

Given a dataset, a natural question to ask is, “What is the scale, or dispersion, of the dataset?” This is a different question from data location,
which might be captured by the median or the mean. The data scale ismore often captured by the variance or an interquantile range. We will
focus on the interquartile range (IQR), a well-known robust estimator
for the scale of the data. We begin with some rough intuition. Suppose
the data are i.i.d. samples drawn from a distribution with cumulative
distribution function F . Then IQR(F ), defined as F −1 (3/4)−F −1 (1/4),
is a constant, depending only on F . It might be very large, or very tiny,
but either way, if the density of F is sufficiently high at the two quartiles, then, given enough samples from F , the empirical (that is, sample)
interquartile distance should be close to IQR(F ).
Our Propose-Test-Release algorithm for the interquartile distancefirst tests how many database points need to be changed to obtain adata set with a “sufficiently different” interquartile distance. Only if
the (noisy) reply is “sufficiently large” will the algorithm release anapproximation to the interquartile range of the dataset.
The definition of “sufficiently different” is multiplicative, as an additive notion for difference of scale makes no sense — what would be theright scale for the additive amount? The algorithm therefore works
with the logarithm of the scale, which leads to a multiplicative noise7.2. Propose-test-Release147

on the IQR. To see this, suppose that, as in what might be the typicalcase, the sample interquartile distance cannot change by a factor of 2
by modifying a single point. Then the logarithm (base 2) of the sample
interquartile has local sensitivity bounded by 1. This lets us privately
release an approximation to the logarithm of the sample interquartile
range by adding to this value a random draw from Lap(1/ε).
Let IQR(x) denote the sample interquartile range when the thedata set is x. The algorithm is (implicitly) proposing to add noisedrawn from Lap(1/ε) to the value log2 (IQR(x)). To test whether thismagnitude of noise is sufficient for differential privacy, we discretize R
into disjoint bins {[k ln 2, (k+1) ln 2)}k∈Z and ask how many data points
must be modified in order to obtain a new database, the logarithm(base 2) of whose interquartile range is in a different bin than thatof log2 (IQR(x)). If the answer is at least two then the local sensitivity(of the logarithm of the interquartile range) is bounded by the bin
width. We now give more details.
To understand the choice of bin size, we write
log2 (IQR(x)) =ln IQR(x)c ln 2
=
,
ln 2
ln 2

whence we find that looking at ln(IQR(x)) on the scale of ln 2 is equivalent to looking at log2 (IQR(x)) on the scale of 1. Thus we have scaled
bins which are intervals whose endpoints are a pair of adjacent integers: Bk = [k, k + 1), k ∈ Z, and we let k1 = blog2 (IQR(x))c, so
log2 (IQR(x)) ∈ [k1 , k1 + 1) and we say informally that the logarithmof the IQR is in bin k1 . Consider the following testing query:
Q0 : How many data points need to change in order to geta new database z such that log2 (IQR(z)) ∈/ Bk1 ?
Let A0 (x) be the true answer to Q0 when the database is x.
If A0 (x) ≥ 2, then neighbors y of x satisfy | log2 (IQR(y)) −log2 (IQR(x))| ≤ 1. That is, they are close to each other. This is
not equivalent to being in the same interval in the discretization:log2 (IQR(x)) may lie close to one of the endpoints of the interval[k1 , k1 + 1) and log2 (IQR(y)) may lie just on the other side of theendpoint. Letting R0 = A0 (x) + Lap(1/ε), a small R0 , even when the

148

When Worst-Case Sensitivity is Atypicaldraw from the Laplace distribution has small magnitude, might not
actually indicate high sensitivity of the interquartile range. To copewith the case that the local sensitivity is very small, but log2 (IQR(x))
is very close to the boundary, we consider a second discretization(2){Bk = [k−0.5, k+0.5)}k∈Z . We denote the two discretizations by B (1)and B (2) respectively. The value log2 (IQR(x)) — indeed, any value —cannot be close to a boundary in both discretizations. The test is passed
if R0 is large in at least one discretization.
The Scale algorithm (Algorithm 12) below for computing databasescale assumes that n, the size of the database, is known, and the distance query (“How far to a database whose interquartile range has
sensitivity exceeding b?”) is asking how many points must be moved
to reach a database with high sensitivity of the IQR. We can avoid
this assumption by having the algorithm first ask the (sensitivity 1)
query: “How many data points are in x?” We remark that, for technical reasons, to cope with the case IQR(x) = 0, we define log 0 = −∞,b−∞c = −∞, and let [−∞, −∞) = {−∞}.
Algorithm 12 The Scale Algorithm (releasing the interquartile
range)
Require: dataset: x ∈ X ∗ , privacy parameters: , δ > 0
1: for the jth discretization (j = 1, 2) do
2:Compute R0 (x) = A0 (x) + z0 , where z0 ∈R Lap(1/ε).
3:
if R0 ≤ 1 + ln(1/δ) then4:
Let s(j) = ⊥.
5:
else
(j)
(j)
6:
Let s(j) = IQR(x) × 2zs , where zs ∼ Lap(1/ε).
7:
end if
8: end for
9: if s(1) 6= ⊥ then10:
Return s(1) .
11: else
12:
Return s(2) .
13: end if7.2. Propose-test-Release

149

Note that the algorithm is efficient: let x(1) , x(2) , . . . , x(n) denotethe n database points after sorting, and let x(m) denote the median, so
m = b(n+1)/2c. Then the local sensitivity of the median is max{x(m)−x(m − 1), x(m + 1) − x(m)} and, more importantly, one can compute
A0 (x) by considering O(n) sliding intervals with width 2k1 and 2k1 +1 ,each having one endpoint in x. The computational cost for each interval
is constant.
We will not prove convergence bounds for this algorithm because,
for the sake of simplicity, we have used a base for the logarithm thatis far from optimal (a better base is 1 + 1/ ln n). We briefly outline thesteps in the proof of privacy.
Theorem 7.1. Algorithm Scale (Algorithm 12) is (4ε, δ)-differentiallyprivate.
Proof. (Sketch.) Letting s be shorthand for the result obtained witha single discretization, and defining D0 = {x : A0 (x) ≥ 2}, the proof
shows:
1. The worst-case sensitivity of query Q0 is at most 1.
2. Neighboring databases are almost equally likely to result in ⊥:For all neighboring database x, y:Pr[s = ⊥|x] ≤ eε Pr[s = ⊥|y].
3. Databases not in D0 are unlikely to pass the test:∀x ∈/ D0 : Pr[s 6= ⊥|x] ≤δ.
2

4. ∀C ∈ R+ , x ∈ D0 and all neighbors y of x:Pr[s ∈ C|x] ≤ e2ε Pr[s ∈ C|y] .
Thus, we get (2ε, δ/2)-differential privacy for each discretization.
Applying Theorem 3.16 (Appendix B), which says that “the epsilons
and the deltas add up,” yields (4ε, δ)-differential privacy.

150

When Worst-Case Sensitivity is Atypical

7.3

Stability and privacy

7.3.1

Two notions of stability

We begin by making a distinction between the two notions of stability
intertwined in this section: stability under subsampling, which yields
similar results under random subsamples of the data, and perturbation
stability, or low local sensitivity, for a given dataset. In this section wewill define and make use of extreme versions of both of these.
• Subsampling stability: We say f is q-subsampling stable on x iff (x̂) = f (x) with probability at least 3/4 when x̂ is a random
subsample from x which includes each entry independently withprobability q. We will use this notion in Algorithm Asamp , a variant of Sample and Aggregate.
• Perturbation Stability: We say that f is stable on x if f takes thevalue f (x) on all of the neighbors of x (and unstable otherwise).
In other words, f is stable on x if the local sensitivity of f on x
is zero. We will use this notion (implemented in Algorithm Adist
below) for the aggregation step of Asamp .
At the heart of Algorithm Asamp is a relaxed version of perturbation stability, where instead of requiring that the value be unchanged
on neighboring databases — a notion that makes sense for arbitrary
ranges, including arbitrary discrete ranges — we required only that thevalue be “close” on neighboring databases — a notion that requires a
metric on the range.
Functions f with arbitrary ranges, and in particular the problemof aggregating outputs in Subsample and Aggregate, motivate the nextalgorithm, Adist . On input f, x, Adist outputs f (x) with high probability
if x is at distance at least 2 log(1/δ)
from the nearest unstable dataεset. The algorithm is conceptually trivial: compute the distance to thenearest unstable data set, add Laplace noise Lap(1/ε), and check that
this noisy distance is at least 2 log(1/δ). If so, release f (x), otherwiseεoutput ⊥. We now make this a little more formal.
We begin by defining a quantitative measure of perturbation
stability.

7.3. Stability and privacy

151

Definition 7.2. A function f : X ∗ → R is k-stable on input x if adding
or removing any k elements from x does not change the value of f , thatis, f (x) = f (y) for all y such that |x4y| ≤ k. We say f is stable on x
if it is (at least) 1-stable on x, and unstable otherwise.
Definition 7.3. The distance to instability of a data set x ∈ X ∗ withrespect to a function f is the number of elements that must be added
to or removed from y to reach a data set that is not stable under f .
Note that f is k-stable on x if and only if the distance of x to
instability is at least k.
Algorithm Adist , an instantiation of Propose-Test-Release fordiscrete-valued functions g, appears in Figure 13.
Algorithm 13 Adist (releasing g(x) based on distance to instability)
Require: dataset: x ∈ X ∗ , privacy parameters: , δ > 0, function g :X∗ → R
1: d ← distance from x to nearest unstable instance2: dˆ ← d + Lap(1/ε)
log(1/δ)3: if dˆ >
then
ε
4:
Output g(x)5: else6:
Output ⊥7: end if
The proof of the following propostion is immediate from the properties of the Laplace distribution.
Proposition 7.2. For every function g:
1. Adist is (ε, δ)-differentially private.
-stable on x, then Adist (x) =2. For all β > 0: if g is ln(1/δ)+ln(1/β)εg(x) with probability at least 1 − β, where the probability spaceis the coin flips of Adist .
This distance-based result is the best possible, in the following
sense: if there are two data sets x and y for which Adist outputs different

152

When Worst-Case Sensitivity is Atypicalvalues g(x) and g(y), respectively, with at least constant probability,
then the distance from x to y must be Ω(log(1/δ)/ε).
Distance to instability can be difficult to compute, or even to lower
bound, so this is not in general a practical solution. Two examples
where distance to instability turns out to be easy to bound are themedian and the mode (most frequently occurring value).
Adist may also be unsatisfactory if the function, say f , is not stableon the specific datasets of interest. For example, suppose f is not stablebecause of the presence of a few outliers in x. Instances of the averagebehave this way, although for this function there are well know robust
alternatives such as the winsorized mean, the trimmed mean, and the
median. By what about for general functions f ? Is there a method of“forcing” an arbitrary f to be stable on a database x?
This will be the goal of Asamp , a variant of Subsample and Aggregate that outputs f (x) with high probability (over its own random
choices) whenever f is subsampling stable on x.
7.3.2

Algorithm Asamp

In Asamp , the blocks B1 , . . . , Bm are chosen with replacement, so thateach block has the same distribution as the inputs (although now an element of x may appear in multiple blocks). We will call these subsampleddatasets x̂1 , . . . , x̂m . The intermediate outputs z = {f (x̂1 ), . . . , f (x̂m )}are then aggregated via Adist with function g = mode. The distancemeasure used to estimate the stability of the mode on z is a scaled version of the difference between the popularity of the mode and that of
the second most frequent value. Algorithm Asamp , appears in Figure 14.
Its running time is dominated by running f about 1/q 2 times; hence itis efficient whenever f is.
The key property of Algorithm Asamp is that, on input f, x, it outputs f (x) with high probability, over its own random choices, whenε. This result has
ever f is q-subsampling stable on x for q = 64 log(1/δ)
an important statistical interpretation. Recall the discussion of model
selection from Example 7.1. Given a collection of models, the sample
complexity of model selection is the number of samples from a distribution in one of the models necessary to select the correct model7.3. Stability and privacy

153

with probability at least 2/3. The result says that differentially private
model selection increases the sample complexity of (non-private) model
selection by a problem-independent (and range-independent) factor ofO(log(1/δ)/ε).
Algorithm 14 Asamp : Bootstrapping for Subsampling-Stable f
Require: dataset: x, function f : X ∗ → R, privacy parameters , δ >0.

1: q ← 64 ln(1/δ), m ← log(n/δ).
q2
2: Subsample m data sets x̂1 , ..., x̂m from x, where x̂i includes eachposition of x independently with probability q.
3: if some element of x appears in more than 2mq sets x̂i then4:
Halt and output ⊥.
5: else6:z ← {f (x̂1 ), · · · , f (x̂m )}.
7:
For each r ∈ R, let count(r) = #{i : f (x̂i ) = r}.
8:
Let count(i) denote the the ith largest count, i = 1, 2.
9:d ← (count(1) − count(2) )/(4mq) − 1
10:Comment Now run Adist (g, z) using d to estimate distance toinstability:11:dˆ ← d + Lap( 1 ).
12:
if dˆ > ln(1/δ)/ε then13:
Output g(z) = mode(z).
14:
else
15:
Output ⊥.
16:
end if
17: end if

Theorem 7.3.
1. Algorithm Asamp is (ε, δ)-differentially private.
ε2. If f is q-subsampling stable on input x where q = 64 ln(1/δ), thenalgorithm Asamp (x) outputs f (x) with probability at least 1 − 3δ.

3. If f can be computed in time T (n) on inputs of length n, thenn)(T (qn) + n).
Asamp runs in expected time O( log
q2

154

When Worst-Case Sensitivity is Atypical

Note that the utility statement here is an input-by-input guarantee; f need not be q-subsampling stable on all inputs. Importantly,
there is no dependence on the size of the range R. In the context ofmodel selection, this means that one can efficiently satisfy differential
privacy with a modest blowup in sample complexity (about log(1/δ)/ε)
whenever there is a particular model that gets selected with reasonableprobability.
The proof of privacy comes from the insensitivity of the computation of d, the privacy of the Propose-Test-Release technique, andthe privacy of Subsample and Aggregate, modified slightly to allow for
the fact that this algorithm performs sampling with replacement andthus the aggregator has higher sensitivity, since any individual might
affect up to 2mq blocks. The main observation for analyzing the utility of this approach is that the stability of the mode is a functionof the difference between the frequency of the mode and that of thenext most popular element. The next lemma says that if f is subsampling stable on x, then x is far from unstable with respect to the modeg(z) = g(f (x̂1 ), . . . , f (x̂m )) (but not necessarily with respect to f ), andmoreover one can estimate the distance to instability of x efficiently andprivately.
Lemma 7.4. Fix q ∈ (0, 1). Given f : X ∗ → R, let fˆ : X ∗ → R be
the function fˆ = mode(f (x̂1 ), ..., f (x̂m )) where each x̂i includes eachelement of x independently with probability q and m = ln(n/δ)/q 2 . Letd(z) = (count(1) − count(2) )/(4mq) − 1; that is, given a “database” z ofvalues, d(z) + 1 isa scaled difference between the number of occurrencesof the two most popular values. Fix a data set x. Let E be the eventthat no position of x is included in more than 2mq of the subsets x̂i .
Then, when q ≤ ε/64 ln(1/δ) we have:
1. E occurs with probability at least 1 − δ.
2. Conditioned on E, d lower bounds the stability of fˆ on x, and dhas global sensitivity 1.
3. If f is q-subsampling stable on x, then with probability at least
1 − δ over the choice of subsamples, we have fˆ(x) = f (x),and, conditioned on this event, the final test will be passed with

7.3. Stability and privacy

155

probability at least 1 − δ, where the probability is over the draw
from Lap(1/ε).
The events in Parts 2 and 3 occur simultaenously with probability atleast 1 − 2δ.
Proof. Part 1 follows from the Chernoff bound. To prove Part 2, notice
that, conditioned on the event E, adding or removing one entry inthe original data set changes any of the counts count(r) by at most2mq. Therefore, count(1) − count(2) changes by at most 4mq. This inturn means that d(f (x̂1 ), . . . , f (x̂m )) changes by at most one for any x
and hence has global sensitivity of one. This also implies that d lower
bounds the stability of fˆ on x.
We now turn to part 3. We want to argue two facts:
1. If f is q-subsampling stable on x, then there is likely to be a large
gap between the counts of the two most popular bins. Specifically,
we want to show that with high probability count(1) − count(2) ≥m/4. Note that if the most popular bin has count at least 5m/8
then the second most popular bin can have count at most 3m/8,
with a difference of m/4. By definition of subsampling stability
the most popular bin has an expected count of at least 3m/4 andhence, by the Chernoff bound, taking α = 1/8, has probability
2
at most e−2mα = e−m/32 of having a count less than 5m/8. (Allthe probabilities are over the subsampling.)
2. When the gap between the counts of the two most popular binsis large, then the algorithm is unlikely to fail; that is, the test is
likely to succeed. The worry is that the draw from Lap( 1ε ) will be
negative and have large absolute value, so that dˆ falls below thethreshold (ln(1/δ)/ε) even when d is large. To ensure this happens
with probability at most δ it suffices that d > 2 ln(1/δ)/ε.
By definition, d = (count(1) − count(2) )/(4mq) − 1, and, assuming
we are in the high probability case just described, this implies
d≥

1
m/4
−1=
−1
4mq
16q

156

When Worst-Case Sensitivity is Atypicalso it is enough to have1
> 2 ln(1/δ)/ε.
16q
Taking q ≤ ε/64 ln(1/δ) suffices.

Finally, note that with these values of q and m we have e−m/32 < δ.
Example 7.3. [The Raw Data Problem] Suppose we have an analyst
whom we can trust to follow instructions and only publish information
obtained according to these instructions. Better yet, suppose we haveb such analysts, and we can trust them not to communicate among
themselves. The analysts do not need to be identical, but they do need
to be considering a common set of options. For example, these options
might be different statistics in a fixed set S of possible statistics, and in
this first step the analyst’s goal is to choose, for eventual publication,
the most significant statistic in S. Later, the chosen statistic will berecomputed in a differentially private fashion, and the result can be
published.
As described the procedure is not private at all: the choice of statistic made in the first step may depend on the data of a single individual!
Nonetheless, we can use the Subsample-and-Aggregate framework tocarry out the first step, with the ith analyst receiving a subsample ofthe data points and applying to this smaller database the function fi
to obtain an option. The options are then aggregated as in algorithm
Asamp ; if there is a clear winner this is overwhelmingly likely to be theselected statistic. This was chosen in a differentially private manner,and in the second step it will be computed with differential privacy.

Bibliographic Notes
Subsample and Aggregate was invented by Nissim, Raskhodnikova, andSmith [68], who were the first to define and exploit low local sensitivity.
Propose-Test-Release is due to Dwork and Lei [22], as is the algorithm
for releasing the interquartile range. The discussion of stability andprivacy, and Algorithm Asamp which blends these two techniques, isdue to Smith and Thakurta [80]. This paper demonstrates the power of7.3. Stability and privacy

157

Asamp by analyzing the subsampling stability conditions of the famous
LASSO algorithm and showing that differential privacy can be obtained“for free,” via (a generalization of Asamp ), precisely under the (fixeddata as well as distributional) conditions for which LASSO is known
to have good explanatory power.

8
Lower Bounds and Separation Results

In this section, we investigate various lower bounds and tradeoffs:
1. How inaccurate must responses be in order not to completely
destroy any reasonable notion of privacy?
2. How does the answer to the previous question depend on thenumber of queries?
3. Can we separate (ε, 0)-differential privacy from (ε, δ)-differential
privacy in terms of the accuracy each permits?
4. Is there an intrinsic difference between what can be achieved forlinear queries and for arbitrary low-sensitivity queries while maintaining (ε, 0)-differential privacy?
A different flavor of separation result distinguishes the computational complexity of generating a data structure handling all thequeries in a given class from that of generating a synthetic databasethat achieves the same goal. We postpone a discussion of this result to
Section 9.

158

8.1. Reconstruction attacks

8.1

159

Reconstruction attacks

We argued in Section 1 that any non-trivial mechanism must be randomized. It follows that, at least for some database, query, and choice ofrandom bits, the response produced by the mechanism is not perfectly
accurate. The question of how inaccurate answers must be in order toprotect privacy makes sense in all computational models: interactive,
non-interactive, and the models discussed in Section 12.
For the lower bounds on distortion, we assume for simplicity thatthe database consists of a single — but very sensitive — bit perperson, so we can think of the database as an n-bit Boolean vectord = (d1 , . . . , dn ). This is an abstraction of a setting in which the
database rows are quite complex, for example, they may be medical
records, but the attacker is interested in one specific field, such as thepresence or absence of the sickle cell trait. The abstracted attack consists of issuing a string of queries, each described by a subset S of thedatabase rows. The query is asking how many 1’s are in the selectedrows. Representing the query as the n-bit characteristic vector S of
the set S, with 1s in all the positions corresponding to rows in S and0s everywhere else, the true answer to the query is the inner productP
A(S) = ni=1 di Si .
Fix an arbitrary privacy mechanism. We will let r(S) denote theresponse to the query S. This may be obtained explicitly, say, if themechanism is interactive and the query S is issued, or if the mechanism is given all the queries in advance and produces a list of answers,
or implicitly, which occurs if the mechanism produces a synopsis fromwhich the analysts extracts r(S). Note that r(S) may depend on random choices made by the mechanism and the history of queries. Let
E(S, r(S)) denote the error, also called noise or distortion, of the
response r(S), so E(S, r(S)) = |A(S) − r(S)|.
The question we want to ask is, “How much noise is needed inorder to preserve privacy?” Differential privacy is a specific privacy
guarantee, but one might also consider weaker notions, so rather thanguaranteeing privacy the modest goal in the lower bound arguments
will simply be to prevent privacy catastrophes.

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Lower Bounds and Separation Results

Definition 8.1. A mechanism is blatantly non-private if an adversary
can construct a candidate database c that agrees with the real databased in all but o(n) entries, i.e., kc − dk0 ∈ o(n).
In other words, a mechanism is blatantly non-private if it permits
a reconstruction attack that allows the adversary to correctly guessthe secret bit of all but o(n) members of the database. (There is norequirement that the adversary know on which answers it is correct.)
Theorem 8.1. Let M be a mechanism with distortion of magnitude
bounded by E. Then there exists an adversary that can reconstruct the
database to within 4E positions.
An easy consequence of the theorem is that a privacy mechanism
adding noise with magnitude always bounded by, say, n/401, permits
an adversary to correctly reconstruct 99% of the entries.
Proof. Let d be the true database. The adversary attacks in two phases:
1. Estimate the number of 1s in all possible sets: Query M
on all subsets S ⊆ [n].
2. Rule out “distant” databases: For every candidate databasePc ∈ {0, 1}n , if ∃S ⊆ [n] such that | i∈S ci − M(S)| > E, thenrule out c. If c is not ruled out, then output c and halt.
Since M(S) never errs by more than E, the real database will not be
ruled out, so this simple (but inefficient!) algorithm will output somecandidate database c. We will argue that the number of positions inwhich c and d differ is at most 4 · E.
Let I0 be the indices in which di = 0, that is, I0 = {i | di = 0}.
Similarly, define I1 = {i | di = 1}. Since c was not ruled out, |M(I0 ) −P
Pi∈I0 ci | ≤ E. However, by assumption |M(I0 ) −i∈I0 di | ≤ E. It
follows from the triangle inequality that c and d differ in at most 2E
positions in I0 ; the same argument shows that they differ in at most 2E
positions in I1 . Thus, c and d agree on all but at most 4E positions.
What if we consider more realistic bounds on the number of queries?
√
We think of n as an interesting threshold on noise, for the following
reason: if the database contains n people drawn uniformly at random8.1. Reconstruction attacks

161

from a population of size N  n, and the fraction of the population
satisfying a given condition is p, then we expect the number of rows√
in the database satisfying the property to be roughly np ± Θ( n), by
the properties of the binomial distribution. That is, the sampling error√
is on the order of n. We would like that the noise introduced for√
privacy is smaller than the sampling error, ideally o( n). The next
result investigates the feasibility of such small error when the numberof queries is linear in n. The result is negative.
Ignoring computational complexity, to see why there might exist
a query-efficient attack we modify the problem slightly, looking at
databases d ∈ {−1, 1}n and query vectors v ∈ {−1, 1}n . The true
answer is again defined to be d · v, and the response is a noisy versionof the true answer. Now, consider a candidate database c that is far
from d, say, kc−dk0 ∈ Ω(n). For a random v ∈R {−1, 1}n , with constant√probability we have (c − d) · v ∈ Ω( n). To see this, fix x ∈ {−1, 1}nand choose v ∈R {−1, 1}n . Then x · v is a sum of independent randomvariables xi vi ∈R {−1, 1}, which has expectation 0 and variance n, andis distributed according to a scaled and shifted binomial distribuiton.
For the same reason, if c and d differ in at least αn rows, and v ischosen at random, then (c − d) · v is binomially distributed with mean
0 and variance at least αn. Thus, we expect c · v and d · v to differ by at√least α n with constant probability, by the properties of the binomial
distribution. Note that we are using the anti-concentration property ofthe distribution, rather than the usual appeal to concentration.
This opens an attack for ruling out c when the noise is constrained√
to be o( n): compute the difference between c·v and the noisy response√r(v). If the magnitude of this difference exceeds n — which will
occur with constant probability over the choice of v — then rule out c.
The next theorem formalizes this argument and further shows thatthe attack is resilient even to a large fraction of completely arbitrary
responses: Using a linear number of ±1 questions, an attacker canreconstruct almost the whole database if the curator is constrained to√answer at least 21 +η of the questions within an absolute error of o( n).
Theorem 8.2. For any η > 0 and any function α = α(n), there isconstant b and an attack using bn ±1 questions that reconstructs a

162

Lower Bounds and Separation Results2
database that agrees with the real database in all but at most ( 2αη )entries, if the curator answers at least 12 + η of the questions within an
absolute error of α.

Proof. We begin with a simple lemma.
Lemma 8.3. Let Y = ki=1 Xi where each Xi is a ±2 independent
Bernoulli random variable with mean zero. Then for any y and any√ .
` ∈ N, P r[Y ∈ [2y, 2(y + `)]] ≤ `+1kPk
Proof. Note that Y is always even and that P r[Y = 2y] = (k+y)/2( 12 )k .

This expression is at mostk  1 kdk/2e ( 2 ) .

Using Stirling’s approxima√
tion, which says
that
n!
can
be
approximatedby
2nπ(n/e)n , thisq2
is bounded by πk. The claim follows by a union bound over the ` + 1
possible values for Y in [2y, 2(y + `)].

The adversary’s attack is to choose bn random vectors v ∈ {−1, 1}n ,obtain responses (y1 , . . . , ybn ), and then output any database c suchthat |yi − (Ac)i | ≤ α for at least 21 + η of the indices i, where A is thebn × n matrix whose rows are the random query vectors v.
Let the true database be d and let c be the reconstructed database.
By assumption on the behavior of the mechanism, |(Ad)i −yi | ≤ α for a
1/2 + η fraction of i ∈ [bn]. Since c was not ruled out, we also have that|(Ac)i −yi | ≤ α for a 1/2+η fraction of i ∈ [bn]. Since any two such setsof indices agree on at least a 2η fraction of i ∈ [bn], we have from thetriangle inequality that for at least 2ηbn values of i, |[(c − d)A]i | ≤ 2α.
2
We wish to argue that c agrees with d in all but ( 2αη ) entries. We
will show that if the reconstructed c is far from d, disagreeing on at least(2α/η)2 entries, the probability that a randomly chosen A will satisfy|[A(c−d)]i | ≤ 2α for at least 2ηbn values of i will be extremely small —so small that, for a random A, it is extremely unlikely that there evenexists a c far from d that is not eliminated by the queries in A.
Assume the vector z = (c − d) ∈ {−2, 0, 2}n has Hamming weight2
at least ( 2αη ) , so c is far from d. We have argued that, since c is
produced by the attacker, |(Az)i | ≤ 2α for at least 2ηbn values of i.
We shall call such a z bad with respect to A. We will show that, withhigh probability over the choice of A, no z is bad with respect to A.

8.1. Reconstruction attacks

163

2
For any i, vi z is the sum of at least ( 2α
η ) ±2 random values.
Letting k = (2α/η)2 and ` = 2α, we have by Lemma 8.3 that theprobability that vi z lies in an interval of size 4α is at most η, so
the expected number of queries for which |vi z| ≤ 2α is at most ηbn.
Chernoff bounds now imply that the probability that this number
exceeds 2ηbn is at most exp(− ηbn
4 ). Thus the probability of a particularz = c − d being bad with respect to A is at most exp(− ηbn
4 ).
Taking a union bound over the atmost 3n possible zs, we get thatwith probability at least 1 − exp(−n( ηb4 − ln 3)), no bad z exists. Takingb > 4 ln 3/η, the probability that such a bad z exists is exponentiallysmall in n.

Preventing blatant non-privacy is a very low bar for a privacy mechanism, so if differential privacy is meaningful then lower bounds for preventing blatant non-privacy will also apply to any mechanism ensuring
differential privacy. Although for the most part we ignore computational issues in this monograph, there is also the question of the efficiency of the attack. Suppose we were able to prove that (perhaps undersome computational assumption) there exist low-distortion mechanismsthat are “hard” to break; for example, mechanisms for which producing
a candidate database c close to the original database is hard? Then,although a low-distortion mechanism might fail to be differentially private in theory, it could conceivably provide privacy against bounded
adversaries. Unfortunately, this is not the case. In particular, when the√noise is always in o( n), there is an efficient attack using exactly n
fixed queries; moreover, there is even a computationally efficient attack
requiring a linear number of queries in which a 0.239 fraction may be
answered with wild noise.
In the case of “internet scale” data sets, obtaining responses ton queries is infeasible, as n is extremely large, say, n ≥ 108 . What
happens if the curator permits only a sublinear number of questions?
This inquiry led to the first algorithmic results in (what has evolved tobe) (ε, δ)-differential privacy, in which it was shown how to maintainprivacy against a sublinear number of counting queries by adding bino√
mial noise of order o( n) — less than the sampling error! — to eachtrue answer. Using the tools of differential privacy we can do this either

164

Lower Bounds and Separation Results

using either (1) the Gaussian mechanism or (2) the Laplace mechanism
and advanced composition.

8.2

Lower bounds for differential privacy

The results of the previous section yielded lower bounds on distortion
needed to ensure any reasonable notion of privacy. In contrast, theresult in this section is specific to differential privacy. Although someof the details in the proof are quite technical, the main idea is elegant:suppose (somehow) the adversary has narrowed down the set of possible
databases to a relatively small set S of 2s vectors, where the L1 distance
between each pair of vectors is some large number ∆. Suppose further
that we can find a k-dimensional query F , 1-Lipschitz in each of its
output coordinates, with the property that the true answers to thequery look very different (in L∞ norm) on the different vectors in ourset; for example, the distance on any two elements in the set may beΩ(k). It is helpful to think geometrically about the “answer space” Rk .
Each element x in the set S gives rise to a vector F (x) in answer space.
The actual response will be a perturbation of this point in answer
space. Then a volume-based pigeon hole argument (in answer space)shows that, if with even moderate probability the (noisy) responses are“reasonably” close to the true answers, then  cannot be very small.
This stems from the fact that for (ε, 0)-differentially private mechanisms M, for arbitrarily different databases x, y, any response in the
support of M(x) is also in the support of M(y). Taken together withthe construction of an appropriate collection of vectors and a (contrived, non-counting) query, the result yields a lower bound on distortion that is linear k/ε. The argument appeals to Theorem 2.2, which
discusses group privacy. In our case the group in question corresponds
to the indices contributing to the (L1 ) distance between a pair of vectors in S.
8.2.1

Lower bound by packing arguments

We begin with an observation which says, intuitively, that if the “likely”
response regions, when the query is F , are disjoint, then we can bound8.2. Lower bounds for differential privacy165

 from below, showing that privacy can’t be too good. When kF (xi ) −F (xj )k∞ is large, this says that to get very good privacy, even whenrestricted to databases that differ in many places, we must get very
erroneous responses on some coordinate of F .
The argument uses the histogram representation of databases. In
the sequel, d = |X | denotes the size of the universe from which databaseelements are drawn.
Lemma 8.4. Assume the existence of a set S = {x1 , . . . , x2s }, where
each xi ∈ Nd , such that for i 6= j, kxi − xj k1 ≤ ∆. Further, let F :Nd → Rk be a k-dimensional query. For 1 ≤ i ≤ 2s , let Bi denote a
region in Rk , the answer space, and assume that the Bi are mutually
disjoint. If M is an (ε, 0)-differentially private mechanism for F such.
that, ∀1 ≤ i ≤ 2s , Pr[M(xi ) ∈ Bi ] ≥ 1/2, then ε ≥ ln(2)(s−1)∆
Proof. By assumption Pr[M(xj ) ∈ Bj ] ≥ 2−1 . Since the regions
B1 , . . . , B2s are disjoint, ∃j 6= i ∈ [2s ] such that Pr[M(xi ) ∈ Bj ] ≤ 2−s .
That is, for at least one of the 2s − 1 regions Bj , the probability that
M(xi ) is mapped to this Bj is at most 2−s . Combining this with differential privacy, we have
2−1
PrM [Bj |xj ]≤≤ exp(ε∆).
−s2PrM [Bj |xi ]Corollary 8.5. Let S = {x1 , . . . , x2s } be as in Lemma 8.4, and assume
that for any i 6= j, kF (xi )−F (xj )k∞ ≥ η. Let Bi denote the L∞ ball in
Rk of radius η/2 centered at xi . Let M be any ε-differentially private
mechansim for F satisfying∀1 ≤ i ≤ 2s : Pr[M(xi ) ∈ Bi ] ≥ 1/2.
Then ε ≥ (ln 2)(s−1).
∆
Proof. The regions B1 , . . . , B2s are disjoint, so the conditions ofLemma 8.4 are satisfied. The corollary follows by applying the lemma
and taking logarithms.
In Theorem 8.8 below we will look at queries F that are simply k independently and randomly generated (nonlinear!) queries. For

166

Lower Bounds and Separation Results

suitable S and F (we will work to find these) the corollary says that
if with probability at least 1/2 all responses simultaneously have small
error, then privacy can’t be too good. In other words,
Claim 8.6 (Informal Restatement of Corollary 8.5). To obtain (ε, 0)differential privacy for ε ≤ ln(2)(s−1), the mechanism must add noise∆with L∞ norm greater than η/2 with probability exceeding 1/2.
As a warm-up exercise, we prove an easier theorem that requires alarge data universe.
Theorem 8.7. Let X = {0, 1}k . Let M : X n → Rk be an (ε, 0)differentially private mechanism such that for every database x ∈ X n
with probability at least 1/2 M(x) outputs all of the 1-way marginalsof x with error smaller than n/2. That is, for each j ∈ [k], the jthcomponent of M(x) should approximately equal the number of rows ofx whose jth bit is 1, up to an error smaller than n/2. Then n ∈ Ω(k/ε).
Note that this bound is tight to within a constant factor, by the simple composition theorem, and that it separates (ε, 0)-differential privacy
from (ε, δ)-differential privacy, for δ ∈ 2−o(n) , since, by the advanced
composition theorem (Theorem 3.20), Laplace noise with parameterpb = k ln(1/δ)/ε suffices for the former, in contrast to Ω(k/ε) needed2
for the latter. Taking k ∈ Θ(n) and, say, δ = 2− log n , yields the separation.
Proof. For every string w ∈ {0, 1}k , consider the database xw consistingof n identical rows, all of which equal w. Let Bw ∈ Rk consist of alltuples of numbers that provide answers to the 1-way marginals on x
with error less than n/2. That is,
Bw = {(a1 , . . . , ak )} ∈ Rk : ∀i ∈ [k] |ai − nwi | < n/2}.
Put differently, Bw is the open `∞ of radius n/2 around nw ∈ {0, n}k .
Notice that the sets Bw are mutually disjoint.
If M is an accurate mechanism for answering 1-way marginals, thenfor every w the probability of landing in Bw when the database is xw
should be at least 1/2: Pr[M(xw ) ∈ Bw ] ≥ 1/2. Thus, setting ∆ = n.
and s = k in Corollary 8.5 we have ε ≥ (ln 2)(s−1)∆

8.2. Lower bounds for differential privacy

167

Theorem 8.8. For any k, d, n ∈ N and ε ∈ (0, 1/40], where n ≥min{k/ε, d/ε}, there is a query F : Nd → Rk with per-coordinate sensitivity at most 1 such that any (ε, 0)-differentially private mechanism
adds noise of L∞ norm Ω(min{k/ε, d/ε}) with probability at least 1/2
on some databases of weight at most n.
Note that d = |X | need not be large here, in contrast to the requirement in Theorem 8.7.
Proof. Let ` = min{k, d}. Using error-correcting codes we can construct a set S = {x1 , . . . , x2s }, where s = `/400, such that each xi ∈ Nd
and in addition
1. ∀i : kxi k1 ≤ w = `/(1280ε)2. ∀i 6= j, kxi − xj k1 ≥ w/10
We do not give details here, but we note that the databases in S areof size at most w < n, and so kxi − xj k1 ≤ 2w. Taking ∆ = 2w theset S satisfies the conditions of Corollary 8.5. The remainder of oureffort is to obtain the queries F to which we will apply Corollary 8.5.
Given S = {x1 , . . . , x2s }, where each xi ∈ Nd , the first step is to define assmapping from the space of histograms to vectors in R2 , LS : Nd → R2 .
Intuitively (and imprecisely!), given a histogram x, the mapping lists,
for each xi ∈ S, the L1 distance from x to xi . More precisely, letting w
be an upper bound on the weight of any xi in our collection we define
the mapping as follows.
• For every xi ∈ S, there is a coordinate i in the mapping.
• The ith coordinate of LS (x) is max{w/30 − kxi − zk1 , 0}.
Claim 8.9. If x1 , . . . , x2s satisfy the conditions
1. ∀ikxi k1 ≤ w; and2. ∀i 6= jkxi − xj k1 ≥ w/10
then the map LS is 1-Lipschitz; in particular, if kz1 − z2 k1 = 1, thenkLS (z1 ) − LS (z2 )k1 ≤ 1, assuming w ≥ 31.

168

Lower Bounds and Separation Results

Proof. Since we assume w ≥ 31 we have that if z ∈ Nd is close to somexi ∈ S, meaning w/30 > kxi − zk1 , then z cannot be close to any otherxj ∈ S, and the same is true for all kz 0 − zk1 ≤ 1. Thus, for any z1 , z2
such that kz1 − z2 k ≤ 1, if A denotes the set of coordinates where atleast one of LS (z1 ) or LS (z2 ) is non-zero, then A is either empty or is asingleton set. Given this, the statement in the claim is immediate fromthe fact that the mapping corresponding to any particular coordinate
is clearly 1-Lipschitz.
We can finally describe the queries F . Corresponding to any r ∈s{−1, 1}2 , we define fr : Nd → R, as
fr (x) =dX

LS (x)i · ri ,i=1

which is simply the inner product LS · r. F will be a random maps
F : Nd → Rk : Pick r1 , . . . , rk ∈ {−1, 1}2 independently and uniformly
at random and define
F (x) = (fr1 (x), . . . , frk (x)) .
That is, F (x) is simply the result of the inner product of LS (x) with krandomly chosen ±1 vectors.
Note that for any x ∈ S LS (x) has one coordinate with value w/30
s(and the others are all zero), so ∀ri ∈ {−1, 1}2 and x ∈ S we have|fri (x)| = w/30. Now consider any xh , xj ∈ S, where h 6= j. It followssthat for any ri ∈ {−1, 1}2 ,Pr[|fri (xh ) − fri (xj )| ≥ w/15] ≥ 1/2
ri(this event occurs when (ri )h = −(ri )j ). A basic application of theChernoff bound implies thatPr [For at least 1/10 of the ri s,

r1 ,...,rk|fri (xh ) − fri (xj )| ≥ w/15] ≥ 1 − 2−k/30 .
Now, the total number of pairs (xi , xj ) of databases such that xi , xj ∈ S
is at most 22s ≤ 2k/200 . Taking a union bound this implies
Pr [∀h 6= j,

r1 ,...,rk

For at least 1/10 of the ri s,|fri (xh ) − fri (xj )| ≥ w/15] ≥ 1 − 2−k/40

8.2. Lower bounds for differential privacy

169

This implies that we can fix r1 , . . . , rk such that the following is true.
∀h 6= j,For at least 1/10 of the ri s,|fri (xh ) − fri (xj )| ≥ w/15

Thus, for any xh 6= xj ∈ S, kF (xh ) − F (xj )k∞ ≥ w/15.
Setting ∆ = 2w and s = `/400 > 3εw (as we did above), andη = w/15, we satisfy the conditions of Corollary 8.5 and conclude∆ ≤ (s − 1)/ε, proving the theorem (via Claim 8.6).
The theorem is almost tight: if k ≤ d then we can apply the
Laplace mechanism to each of the k sensitivity 1 component queries
in F with parameter k/ε, and we expect the maximum distortion to beΘ(k ln k/ε). On the other hand, if d ≤ k then we can apply the Laplacemechanism to the d-dimensional histogram representing the database,and we expect the maximum distortion to be Θ(d ln d/ε).
The theorem actually shows that, given knowledge of the set S andknowledge that the actual database is an element x ∈ S, the adversary
can completely determine x if the L∞ norm of the distortion is too
small. How in real life might the adversary obtain a set S of the typeused in the attack? This can occur when a non-private database system
has been running on a dataset, say, x. For example, x could be a vectorin {0, 1}n and the adversary may have learned, through a sequence of
linear queries, that x ∈ C, a linear code of distance, say n2/3 . Of course,
if the database system is not promising privacy there is no problem.
The problem arises if the administrator decides to replace the existing
system with a differentially private mechanism — after several queries
have received noise-free responses. In particular, if the administrator
chooses to use (ε, δ)-differential privacy for subsequent k queries thenthe distortion might fall below the Ω(k/ε) lower bound, permitting theattack described in the proof of Theorem 8.8.
The theorem also emphasizes that there is a fundamental difference
between auxiliary information about (sets of) members of the databaseand information about the database as a whole. Of course, we alreadyknew this: being told that the number of secret bits sums to exactly
5, 000 completely destroys differential privacy, and an adversary that
already knew the secret bit of every member of the database except
one individual could then conclude the secret bit of the remaining
individual.

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Lower Bounds and Separation Results

Additional Consequences. Suppose k ≤ d, so ` = k in Theorem 8.8.
The linear in k/ε lower bound on noise for k queries sketched in
the previous section immediately yields a separation between counting
queries and arbitrary 1-sensitivity queries, as the SmallDB construction
answers (more than) n queries with noise roughly n2/3 while maintaining differential privacy. Indeed, this result also permits us to conclude
that there is no small α-net for large sets of arbitrary low sensitivity
queries, for α ∈ o(n) (as otherwise the net mechanism would yield an(ε, 0) algorithm of desired accuracy).

8.3

Bibliographic notes

The first reconstruction attacks, including Theorem 8.1, are due toDinur and Nissim [18], who also gave an attack requiring only polynomial time computation and O(n log2 n) queries, provided the noise√is always o( n). Realizing that attacks requiring n random linear
queries, when n is “internet scale,” are infeasible, Dinur, Dwork, andNissim gave the first positive results, showing that for a sublinear
number of subset sum queries, a form of privacy (now known to
imply (ε, δ)-differential privacy) can be achieved by adding noise scaled√to o( n) [18]. This was exciting because it suggested that, if we thinkof the database as drawn from an underlying population, then, evenfor a relatively large number of counting queries, privacy could beachieved with distortion smaller than the sampling error. This eventulaly lead, via more general queries [31, 6], to differential privacy.
The view of these queries as a privacy-preserving programming primitive [6] inspired McSherry’s Privacy Integrated Queries programming
platform [59].
The reconstruction attack of Theorem 8.2 appears in [24], where
Dwork, McSherry, and Talwar showed that polynomial time reconstruction is possible even if a 0.239 fraction of the responses have wild,√arbitrary, noise, provided the others have noise o( n).
The geometric approach, and in particular Lemma 8.4, is due toHardt and Talwar [45], who also gave a geometry-based algorithm
proving these bounds tight for small numbers k ≤ n of queries, under a8.3. Bibliographic notes

171

commonly believed conjecture. Dependence on the conjecture was later
removed by Bhaskara et al. [5]. The geometric approach was extended
to arbitrary numbers of queries by Nikolov et al. [66], who gave an algorithm with instance-optimal mean squared error. For the few queriescase this leads, via a boosting argument, to low expected worst-caseerror. Theorem 8.8 is due to De [17].

9Differential Privacy
and Computational Complexity

Our discussion of differential privacy has so far ignored issues of computational complexity, permitting both the curator and the adversary to
be computationally unbounded. In reality, both curator and adversary
may be computationally bounded.
Confining ourselves to a computationally bounded curator restricts
what the curator can do, making it harder to achieve differential privacy. And indeed, we will show an example of a class of counting queries
that, under standard complexity theoretic assumptions, does not permit efficient generation of a synthetic database, even though inefficientalgorithms, such as SmallDB and Private Multiplicative Weights, are
known. Very roughly, the database rows are digital signatures, signedwith keys to which the curator does not have access. The intuition willbe that any row in a synthetic database must either be copied fromthe original — violating privacy — or must be a signature on a newmessage, i.e., a forgery — violating the unforgeability property of adigital signature scheme. Unfortuately, this state of affairs is not limited to (potentially contrived) examples based on digital signatures: itis even difficult to create a synthetic database that maintains relatively

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accurate two-way marginals.1 On the positive side, given a set Q of
queries and an n-row database with rows drawn from a universe X ,a synthetic database can be generated in time polynomial in n, |X |,and |Q|.
If we abandon the goal of a synthetic database and content ourselveswith a data structure from which we can obtain a relatively accurate
approximation to the answer to each query, the situation is much moreinteresting. It turns out that the problem is intimately related to the
tracing traitors problem, in which the goal is to discourage piracy while
distributing digital content to paying customers.
If the adversary is restricted to polynomial time, then it becomeseasier to achieve differential privacy. In fact, the immensely powerful concept of secure function evaluation yields a natural way avoid
the trusted curator (while giving better accuracy than randomized
response), as well as a natural way to allow multiple trusted curators, who for legal reasons cannot share their data sets, to respond toqueries on what is effectively a merged data set. Briefly put, securefunction evaluation is a cryptographic primitive that permits a collection of n parties p1 , p2 , . . . , pn , of which fewer than some fixed fraction are faulty (the fraction varies according to the type of faults; for“honest-but-curious” faults the fraction is 1), to cooperatively computeany function f (x1 , . . . , xn ), where xi is the input, or value, of party pi ,in such a way that no coalition of faulty parties can either disrupt thecomputation or learn more about the values of the non-faulty parties
than can be deduced from the function output and the values of themembers of the coalition. These two properties are traditionally called
correctness and privacy. This privacy notion, let us call it SFE privacy, is very different from differential privacy. Let V be the set ofvalues held by the faulty parties, and let pi be a non-faulty party.2
SFE privacy permits the faulty parties to learn xi if xi can be deduced
from V ∪ {f (x1 , . . . , xn )}; differential privacy would therefore not permit exact release of f (x1 , . . . , xn ). However, secure function evaluation
1

Recall that the two-way marginals are the counts, for every pair of attributevalues, of the number of rows in the database having this pair of values.
2
In the honest but curious case we can let V = {xj } for any party Pj .

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protocols for computing a function f can easily be modified to obtain
differentially private protocols for f , simply by defining a new function,g, to be the result of adding Laplace noise Lap(∆f /ε) to the value of f .
In principle, secure function evaluation permits evaluation of g. Since
g is differentially private and the SFE privacy property, applied to g,says that nothing can be learned about the inputs that is not learnablefrom the value of g(x1 , . . . , xn ) together with V , differential privacy isensured, provided the faulty players are restricted to polynomial time.
Thus, secure function evaluation allows a computational notion of differential privacy to be achieved, even without a trusted curator, at noloss in accuracy when compared to what can be achieved with a trusted
curator. In particular, counting queries can be answered with constant
expected error while ensuring computational differential privacy, withno trusted curator. We will see that, without cryptography, the error
must be Ω(n1/2 ), proving that computational assumptions provably
buy accuracy, in the multiparty case.

9.1

Polynomial time curators

In this section we show that, under standard cryptographic assumptions, it is computationally difficult to create a synthetic database thatwill yield accurate answers to an appropriately chosen class of counting
queries, while ensuring even a minimal notion of privacy.
This result has several extensions; for example, to the case in which
the set of queries is small (but the data universe remains large), and thecase in which the data universe is small (but the set of queries is large).
In addition, similar negative results have been obtained for certain
natural families of queries, such as those corresponding to conjunctions.
We will use the term syntheticize to denote the process of generating
a synthetic database in a privacy-preserving fashion3 . Thus, the resultsin this section concern the computational hardness of syntheticizing.
Our notion of privacy will be far weaker than differential privacy, so
hardness of syntheticizing will imply hardness of generating a synthetic
3

In Section 6 a syntheticizer took as input a synopsis; here we are starting witha database, which is a trivial synopsis.

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175

database in a differentially private fashion. Specifically, we will say thatsyntheticizing is hard if it is hard even to avoid leaking input items intheir entirety. That is, some item is always completely exposed.
Note that if, in contrast, leaking a few input items is not considereda privacy breach, then syntheticizing is easily achieved by releasing arandomly chosen subset of the input items. Utility for this “synthetic
database” comes from sampling bounds: with high probability this subset will preserve utility even with respect to a large set of counting
queries.
When introducing complexity assumptions, we require a security
parameter in order to express sizes; for example, sizes of sets, lengthsof messages, number of bits in a decryption key, and so on, as well as
to express computational difficulty. The security parameter, denoted
κ, represents “reasonable” sizes and effort. For example, it is assumed
that it is feasible to exhaustively search a set whose size is (any fixed)
polynomial in the security parameter.
Computational complexity is an asymptotic notion — we are concerned with how the difficulty of a task increases as the sizes of theobjects (data universe, database, query family) grow. Thus, for example, we therefore need to think not just of a distribution on databasesof a single size (what we have been calling n in the rest of this monograph), but of an ensemble of distributions, indexed by the security
parameter. In a related vein, when we introduce complexity we tend
to “soften” claims: forging a signature is not impossible — one might
be lucky! Rather, we assume that no efficient algorithm succeeds with
non-negligible probability, where “efficient” and “non-negligible” aredefined in terms of the security parameter. We will ignore these finepoints in our intuitive discussion, but will keep them in the formal
theorem statements.
Speaking informally, a distribution of databases is hard to syntheticize (with respect to some family Q of queries) if for any efficient (alleged) syntheticizer, with high probability over a databasedrawn from the distribution, at least one of the database items can beextracted from the alleged syntheticizer’s output. Of course, to avoid
triviality, we will also require that when this leaked item is excluded
from the input database (and, say, replaced by a random different item),

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the probability that it can be extracted from the output is very small.
This means that any efficient (alleged) syntheticizer indeed compromises the privacy of input items in a strong sense.
Definition 9.1 below will formalize our utility requirements for asyntheticizer. There are three parameters: α describes the accuracy
requirement (being within α is considered accurate); γ describes thefraction of the queries on which a successful synthesis is allowed to beinaccurate, and β will be the probability of failure.
For an algorithm A producing synthetic databases, we say that an
output A(x) is (α, γ)-accurate for a query set Q if |q(A(x)) − q(x)| ≤ α
for a 1 − γ fraction of the queries q ∈ Q.
Definition 9.1 ((α, β, γ)-Utility). Let Q be a set of queries and X a data
universe. A syntheticizer A has (α, β, γ)-utility for n-item databaseswith respect to Q and X if for any n-item database x:
Pr [A(x) is (α, γ)-accurate for Q] ≥ 1 − βwhere the probability is over the coins of A.
Let Q = {Qn }n=1,2,... be a query family ensemble, X = {Xn }n=1,2,...
be a data universe ensemble. An algorithm is said to be efficient if its
running time is poly(n, log(|Qn |), log(|Xn |)).
In the next definition we describe what it means for a family of
distributions to be hard to syntheticize. A little more specifically wewill say what it means to be hard to generate synthetic databases thatprovide (α, γ)-accuracy. As usual, we have to make this an asymptotic
statement.
Definition 9.2 ((µ, α, β, γ, Q)-Hard-to-Syntheticize Database Distribution). Let Q = {Qn }n=1,2,... be a query family ensemble, X ={Xn }n=1,2,... be a data universe ensemble, and let µ, α, β, γ ∈ [0, 1].
Let n be a database size and D an ensemble of distributions, where Dn
is over collections of n + 1 items from Xn .
We denote by (x, i, x0i ) ∼ Dn the experiment of choosing an nelement database, an index i chosen uniformly from [n], and an additional element x0i from Xn . A sample from Dn gives us a pair of
databases: x and the result of replacing the ith element of x (under9.2. Some hard-to-Syntheticize distributions

177

a canonical ordering) with x0i . Thus, we think of Dn as specifying a
distribution on n-item databases (and their neighbors).
We say that D is (µ, α, β, γ, Q)-hard-to Syntheticize if there exists anefficient algorithm T such that for any alleged efficient syntheticizer A
the following two conditions hold:
1. With probability 1 − µ over the choice of database x ∼ D and thecoins of A and T , if A(x) maintains α-utility for a 1 − γ fractionof queries, then T can recover one of the rows of x from A(x):Pr(x,i,x0 )∼Dnicoin flips of A,T[(A(x) maintains (α, β, γ)-utility) and (x ∩ T (A(x)) = ∅)] ≤ µ
2. For every efficient algorithm A, and for every i ∈ [n], if we draw
(x, i, x0i ) from D, and replace xi with x0i to form x0 , T cannot
extract xi from A(x0 ) except with small probability:
Pr(x,i,x0 )∼Dni[xi ∈ T (A(x0 ))] ≤ µ.

coin flips of A, T
Later, we will be interested in offline mechanisms that produce arbitrary synopses, not necessarily synthetic databases. In this case we will
be interested in the related notion of hard to sanitize (rather than hard
to Syntheticize), for which we simply drop the requirement that A produce a synthetic database.

9.2

Some hard-to-Syntheticize distributions

We now construct three distributions that are hard to syntheticize.
A signature scheme is given by a triple of (possibly randomized)
algorithms (Gen, Sign, Verify):• Gen : 1N → {(SK, VK)n }n=1,2,... is used to generate a pair consisting of a (secret) signing key and a (public) verification key.
It takes only the security parameter κ ∈ N, written in unary,as input, and produces a pair drawn from (SK, VK)κ , the distribution on (signature,verification) key pairs indexed by κ; we let178

Differential Privacy and Computational Complexity
ps (κ), pv (κ), `s(κ) denote the lengths of the signing key, verification key, and signature, respectively.
• Sign : SKκ × {0, 1}`(κ) → {0, 1}`s(κ) takes as input a signing key
from a pair drawn from (SK, VK)κ and a message m of length`(κ), and produces a signature on m;• Verify : VKκ × {0, 1}∗ × {0, 1}`(κ) → {0, 1} takes as input averification key, a string σ, and a message m of length `(κ), andchecks that σ is indeed a valid signature of m under the given
verification key.

Keys, message lengths, and signature lengths are all polynomial in κ.
The notion of security required is that, given any polynomial (in κ)
number of valid (message, signature) pairs, it is hard to forge any new
signature, even a new signature of a previously signed message (recall
that the signing algorithm may be randomized, so there may exist multiple valid signatures of the same message under the same signing key).
Such a signature scheme can be constructed from any one-way function.
Speaking informally, these are functions that are easy to compute —f (x) can be computed in time polynomial in the length (number ofbits) of x, but hard to invert: for every probabilistic polynomial timealgorithm, running in time polyomial in the security parameter κ, theprobability, over a randomly chosen x in the domain of f , of finding
any valid pre-image of f (x), grows more slowly than the inverse of any
polynomial in κ.
Hard to Syntheticize Distribution I: Fix an arbitrary signaturescheme. The set Qκ of counting queries contains one counting query qvk
for each verification key vk ∈ VKκ . The data universe Xκ consists of theset of all possible (message, signature) pairs of the form for messagesof length `(κ) signed with keys in VKκ .
The distribution Dκ on databases is defined by the following sampling procedure. Run the signature scheme generator Gen(1κ ) to obtain(sk, vk). Randomly choose n = κ messages in {0, 1}`(κ) and run thesigning procedure for each one, obtaining a set of n (message, signature) pairs all signed with key sk. This is the database x. Note that all
the messages in the database are signed with the same signing key.

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179

A data universe item (m, σ) satisfies the predicate qvk if and only
if Verify(vk, m, σ) = 1, i.e., σ is a valid signature for m according toverification key vk.
Let x ∈R Dκ be a database, and let sk be the signing key used, withcorresponding verification key vk. Assuming that the syntheticizer has
produced y, it must be the case that almost all rows of y are valid
signatures under vk (because the fractional count of x for the queryvk is 1). By the unforgeability properties of the signature scheme, allof these must come from the input database x — the polynomial timebounded curator, running in time poly(κ), cannot generate generate a
new valid (message, signature) pair. (Only slightly) more formally, theprobability that an efficient algorithm could produce a (message, signature) pair that is verifiable with key vk, but is not in x, is negligible,
so with overwhelming probability any y that is produced by an efficient syntheticizer will only contain rows of x.4 This contradicts (anyreasonable notion of) privacy.
In this construction, both Qκ (the set of verification keys) and Xκ
(the set of (message, signature) pairs) are large (superpolynomial in κ).
When both sets are small, efficient differentially private generation ofsynthetic datasets is possible. That is, there is a differentially private
syntheticizer whose running time is polynomial in n = κ, |Qκ | and |Xκ |:compute noisy counts using the Laplace mechanism to obtain a synopsis
and then run the syntheticizer from Section 6. Thus, when both ofthese have size polynomial in κ the running time of the syntheticizer
is polynomial in κ.
We now briefly discuss generalizations of the first hardness result
to the cases in which one of these sets is small (but the other remains
large).
Hard to Syntheticize Distribution II: In the database distribution
above, we chose a single (sk, vk) key pair and generated a database of4
The quantification order is important, as otherwise the syntheticizer could havethe signing key hardwired in. We first fix the syntheticizer, then run the generator
and build the database. The probability is over all the randomness in the experiment: choice of key pair, construction of the database, and randomness used by thesyntheticizer.

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messages, all signed using sk; hardness was obtained by requiring thesyntheticizer to generate a new signature under sk, in order for thesyntheticized database to provide an accurate answer to the query qvk .
To obtain hardness for syntheticizing when the size of the set of queries
is only polynomial in the security parameter, we again use digital
signatures, signed with a unique key, but we cannot afford to have aquery for each possible verification key vk, as these are too numerous.
To address this, we make two changes:
1. Database rows now have the form (verification key, message, signature). more precisely, the data universe consists of(key,message,signature) triples X = {(vk, m, s) : vk ∈ VKκ , m ∈{0, 1}`(κ) , s ∈ {0, 1}`s(κ) }.
2. We add to the query class exactly 2pv (κ) queries, where pv (κ)
is the length of the verification keys produced by running thegeneration algorithm Gen(1κ ). The queries have the form (i, b)
where 1 ≤ i ≤ pv (κ) and b ∈ {0, 1}. The meaning of the query“(i, b)” is, “What fraction of the database rows are of the form(vk, m, s) where Verify(vk, m, s) = 1 and the ith bit of vk is b?”
By populating a database with messages signed according to asingle key vk, we ensure that the responses to these queries should
be close to one for all 1 ≤ i ≤ p(κ) when vki = b, and close tozero when vki = 1 − b.
With this in mind, the hard to syntheticize distribution on
databases is constructed by the following sampling procedure: Generate a signature-verification key pair (sk, vk) ← Gen(1κ ), and choosen = κ messages m1 , . . . , mn uniformly from {0, 1}`(κ) . The database x
will have n, rows; for j ∈ [n] the jth row is the verification key, the jthmessage and its valid signature, i.e., the tuple (vk, mj , Sign(mj , sk)).
Next, choose i uniformly from [n]. To generate the (n + 1)st item x0i ,just generate a new message-signature pair (using the same key sk).
Hard to Syntheticize Distribution III: To prove hardness for the caseof a polynomial (in κ) sized message space (but superpolynomial sized
query set) we use a pseudorandom function. Roughly speaking, theseare polynomial time computable functions with small descriptions that

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181

cannot efficiently be distinguished, based only on their input-output
behavior, from truly random functions (whose descriptions are long).
This result only gives hardness of syntheticizing if we insist on maintaining utility for all queries. Indeed, if we are interested only in ensuring on-average utility, then the base generator for counting queries
described in Section 6 yields an efficient algorithm for syntheticizing
when the universe X is of polynomial size, even when Q is exponentiallylarge.
Let {fs }s∈{0,1}κ be a family of pseudo-random functions from [`] to[`], where ` ∈ poly(κ). More specifically, we need that the set of allpairs of elements in [`] is “small,” but larger than κ; this way the κ-bit
string describing a function in the family is shorter than the ` log2 `bits needed to describe a random function mapping [`] to [`]. Such afamily of pseudorandom functions can be constructed from any one-way
function.
Our data universe will be the set of all pairs of elements in [`]:
X = {(a, b) : a, b ∈ [`]}. Qκ will contain two types of queries:
1. There will be one query for each function {fs }s∈{0,1}κ in the family. A universe element (a, b) ∈ X satisfies the query s if and only
if fs (a) = b.
2. There will be a relatively small number, say κ, truly random
queries. Such a query can be constructed by randomly choosing,for each (a, b) ∈ X , whether or not (a, b) will satisfy the query.
The hard to syntheticize distribution is generated as follows. First,
we select a random string s ∈ {0, 1}κ , specifying a function in ourfamily. Next, we generate, for n = κ distinct values a1 , . . . , an chosen at
random from [`] without replacement, the universe element (a, fs (a)).
The intuition is simple, relies only on the first type of query, anddoes not make use of the distinctness of the ai . Given a database x generated according to our distribution, where the pseudo-random function is given by s, the syntheticizer must create a synthetic database(almost) all of whose rows must satisfy the query s. The intuition isthat it can’t reliably find input-output pairs that do not appear in x.
A little more precisely, for an arbitrary element a ∈ [`] such that no182

Differential Privacy and Computational Complexity

row in x is of the form (a, fs (a)), the pseudo-randomness of fs saysthat an efficient syntheticizer should have probability at most negligibly more than 1/` of finding fs (a). In this sense the pseudo-randomness
gives us properties similar to, although somewhat weaker than, what
we obtained from digital signatures.
Of course, for any given a ∈ [`], the syntheticizer can indeed guesswith probability 1/` the value fs (a), so without the second type ofquery, nothing obvious would stop it from ignoring x, choosing an
arbitrary a, and outputting a database of n copies of (a, b), where b
is chosen uniformly at random from [`]. The intuition is now that sucha synthetic database would give the wrong fraction — either zero orone, when the right answer should be about 1/2 — on the truly random
queries.
Formally, we have:
Theorem 9.1. Let f : {0, 1}κ → {0, 1}κ be a one-way function. For
every a > 0, and for every integer n = poly(κ), there exists a queryfamily Q of size exp(poly(κ)), a data universe X of size O(n2+2a ),and a distribution on databases of size n that is (µ, α, β, 0, Q)-hard-tosyntheticize (i.e., hard to syntheticize for worst-case queries) for α ≤1/3, β ≤ 1/10 and µ = 1/40n1+a .
The above theorem shows hardness of sanitizing with synthetic
data. Note, however, that when the query set is small one can always
simply release noisy counts for every query. We conclude that sanitizing for small query classes (with large data universes) is a task that
separates efficient syntheticizing from efficient synopsis generation (sanitization with arbitrary outputs).
9.2.1

Hardness results for general synopses

The hardness results of the previous section apply only to syntheticizers — offline mechanisms that create synthetic databases. There is atight connection between hardness for more general forms of privacypreserving offline mechanisms, which we have been calling offline query
release mechanisms or synopsis generators, and the existence of traitor
tracing schemes, a method of content distribution in which (short) key

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183

strings are distributed to subscribers in such a way that a sender canbroadcast encrypted messages that can be decrypted by any subscriber,
and any useful “pirate” decoder constructed by a coalition of malicious
subscribers can be traced to at least one colluder.
A (private-key, stateless) traitor-tracing scheme consists of algorithms Setup, Encrypt, Decrypt and Trace. The Setup algorithm generates a key bk for the broadcaster and N subscriber keys k1 , . . . , kN .
The Encrypt algorithm encrypts a given bit using the broadcaster’s
key bk. The Decrypt algorithm decrypts a given ciphertext using anyof the subscriber keys. The Trace algorithm gets the key bk and oracle
access to a (pirate, stateless) decryption box, and outputs the indexi ∈ {1, . . . , N } of a key ki that was used to create the pirate box.
An important parameter of a traitor-tracing scheme is its collusionresistance: a scheme is t-resilient if tracing is guaranteed to work as longas no more than t keys are used to create the pirate decoder. Whent = N , tracing works even if all the subscribers join forces to try andcreate a pirate decoder. A more complete definition follows.
Definition 9.3. A scheme (Setup, Encrypt, Decrypt, Trace) as above isa t-resilient traitor-tracing scheme if (i) the ciphertexts it generates
are semantically secure (roughly speaking, polynomial time algorithms
cannot distinguish encryptions of 0 from encryptions of 1), and (ii) no
polynomial time adversary A can “win” in the following game with
non-negligible probability (over the coins of Setup, A, and Trace):
A receives the number of users N and a security parameter κ and(adaptively) requests the keys of up to t users {i1 , . . . , it }. The adversary then outputs a pirate decoder Dec. The Trace algorithm is run
with the key bk and black-box access5 to Dec; it outputs the namei ∈ [N ] of a user or the error symbol ⊥. We say that an adversary A“wins” if it is both the case that Dec has a non-negligible advantage indecrypting ciphertexts (even a weaker condition than creating a usable
pirate decryption device), and the output of Trace is not in {i1 , . . . , it },meaning that the adversary avoided detection.
5Black-box access to an algorithm means that one has no access to the algorithm’sinternals; one can only feed inputs to the algorithm and observe its outputs.

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The intuition for why traitor-tracing schemes imply hardness results
for counting query release is as follows. Fix a traitor tracing scheme. We
must describe databases and counting queries for which query releaseis computationally hard.
For any given n = κ, the database x ∈ {{0, 1}d }n will contain user
keys from the traitor tracing scheme of a colluding set of n users; here dis the length of the decryption keys obtained when the Setup algorithm
is run on input 1κ . The query family Qκ will have a query qc for eachpossible ciphertext c asking “For what fraction of the rows i ∈ [n] doesc decrypt to 1 under the key in row i?” Note that, since every user
can decrypt, if the sender distributes an encryption c of the bit 1, theanswer will be 1: all the rows decrypt c to 1, so the fraction of suchrows is 1. If instead the sender distributes an encryption c0 of the bit 0,
the answer will be 0: since no row decrypts c0 to 1, the fraction of rows
decrypting c0 to 1 is 0. Thus, the exact answer to a query qc , where cis an encryption of a 1-bit messages b, is b itself.
Now, suppose there were an efficient offline differentially private
query release mechanism for queries in Q. The colluders could use thisalgorithm to efficiently produce a synopsis of the database enablinga data analyst to efficiently compute approximate answers to thequeries qc . If these approximations are at all non-trivial, then the analyst can use these to correctly decrypt. That is, the colluders could use
this to form a pirate decoder box. But traitor tracing ensures that, forany such box, the Trace algorithm can recover the key of at least one
user, i.e., a row of the database. This violates differential privacy, contradicting the assumption that there is an efficient differentially private
algorithm for releasing Q.
This direction has been used to rule out√the existence of efficientoffline sanitizers for a particular class of 2Õ( n) counting queries; thiscan be extended to rule out the existence of efficient on-line sanitizers answering Θ̃(n2 ) counting queries drawn adaptively from a second(large) class.
The intuition for why hardness of offline query release for counting
queries implies traitor tracing is that failure to protect privacy immediately yields some form of traceability; that is, the difficulty of providing
an object that yields (approximate) functional equivalence for a set of

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185

rows (decryption keys) while preserving privacy of each individual row(decryption key) — that is, the difficulty of producing an untraceable
decoder — is precisely what we are looking for in a traitor tracing
scheme.
In a little more detail, given a hard-to-sanitize database distribution and family of counting queries, a randomly drawn n-item database
can act like a “master key,” where the secret used to decrypt messages
is the counts of random queries on this database. For a randomly chosen subset S of polylog(n) queries, a random set of polylog(n) rows
drawn from the database (very likely) yields good approximation to
all queries in S. Thus, individual user keys can be obtained by randomly partitioning the database into n/polylog(n) sets of polylog(n)rows and assigning each set to a different user. These sets are large
enough that with overwhelming probability their counts on a random
collection of say polylog(n) queries are all close to the counts of theoriginal database.
To complete the argument, one designs an encryption scheme inwhich decryption is equivalent to computing approximate counts on
small sets of random queries. Since by definition a pirate decryption
box can decrypt, the a pirate box can be used to compute approximate
counts. If we view this box as a sanitization of the database we conclude(because sanitizing is hard) that the decryption box can be “traced”
to the keys (database items) that were used to create it.

9.3

Polynomial time adversaries

Definition 9.4 (Computational Differential Privacy). A randomized algorithm Cκ : X n → Y is ε-computationally differentially private if andonly if for all databases x, y differing in a single row, and for all nonuniform polynomial (in κ) algorithms T ,Pr[T (Cκ (x)) = 1] ≤ eε Pr[T (Cκ (y)) = 1] + ν(κ),
where ν(·) is any function that grows more slowly than the inverse ofany polynomial and the agorithm Cκ runs in time polynomial in n,
log |X |, and κ.

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Intuitively, this says that if the adversary is restricted to polynomial time then computationally differentially private mechanisms provide the same degree of privacy as do (ε, ν(κ))-differentially private
algorithms. In general there is no hope of getting rid of the ν(κ) term;
for example, when encryption is involved there is always some (neglibly
small) chance of guessing the decryption key.
Once we assume the adversary is restricted to polynomial time,
we can use the powerful techniques of secure multiparty computation
to provide distributed online query release algorithms, replacing thetrusted server with a distributed protocoal that simulates a trusted
curator. Thus, for example, a set of hospitals, each holding the dataof many patients, can collaboratively carry out statistical analyses of
the union of their patients, while ensuring differential privacy for eachpatient. A more radical implication is that individuals can maintaintheir own data, opting in or out of each specific statistical query or
study, all the while ensuring differential privacy of their own data.
We have already seen one distributed solution, at least for the problem of computing a sum of n bits: randomized response. This solution
requires no computational assumptions, and has an expected error of√
Θ( n). In contrast, the use of cryptographic assumptions permits much
more accurate and extensive analyses, since by simulating the curator it
can run a distributed implementation of the Laplace mechanism, which
has constant expected error.
This leads to the natural question of whether there is some otherapproach, not relying on cryptographic assumptions, that yields better
accuracy in the distributed setting than does randomized response. Or
more generally, is there a separation between what can be accomplishedwith computational differential privacy and what can be achieved with“traditional” differential privacy? That is, does cryptography provably
buy us something?
In the multiparty setting the answer is yes. Still confining our attention to summing n bits, we have:
Theorem 9.2. For ε < 1, every n-party (ε, 0)-differentially private protocol for computing the sum of n bits (one per party) incurs errorΩ(n1/2 ) with high probability.

9.4. Bibliographic notes

187

A similar theorem holds for (ε, δ)-differential privacy provided δ ∈o(1/n).
Proof. (sketch) Let X1 , . . . , Xn be uniform independent bits. The transcript T of the protocol is a random variable T = T (P1 (X1 ), . . . ,Pn (Xn ), where for i ∈ [n] the protocol of player i is denoted Pi . Conditioned on T = t, the bits X1 , . . . , Xn are still independent bits, eachwith bias O(ε). Further, by differential privacy, the uniformity of theXi , and Bayes’ Law we have:
Pr[T = t|Xi = 1]
Pr[Xi = 1|T = t]=≤ eε < 1 + 2ε.
Pr[Xi = 0|T = t]
Pr[T = t|Xi = 0]
To finish the proof we note that the sum of n independent bits,√
each with constant bias, falls outside any interval of size o( n) withPhigh probability. Thus, with high probability, the sum i Xi is not in
the interval [output(T) − o(n1/2 ), output(T) + o(n1/2 )].
A more involved proof shows a separation between computational
differential privacy and ordinary differential privacy even for the twoparty case. It is a fascinating open question whether computational
assumptions buy us anything in the case of the trusted curator. Initial
results are negative: for small numbers of real-valued queries, i.e., fora number of queries that does not grow with the security parameter,
there is a natural class of utility measures, including Lp distances andmean-squared errors, for which any computationally private mechanism
can be converted to a statistically private mechanism that is roughly
as efficient and achieves almost the same utility.

9.4

Bibliographic notes

The negative results for polynomial time bounded curators and theconnection to traitor tracing are due to Dwork et al. [28]. The connection to traitor tracing was further investigated by Ullman [82], whoshowed that, assuming the existence of 1-way functions, it is computationally hard to answer n2+o(1) arbitrary linear queries with differential
privacy (even if without privacy the answers are easy to compute). In“Our Data, Ourselves,” Dwork, Kenthapadi, McSherry, Mironov, and188

Differential Privacy and Computational Complexity

Naor considered a distributed version of the precursor of differential
privacy, using techniques from secure function evaluation in place ofthe trusted curator [21]. A formal study of computational differential
privacy was initiated in [64], and the separation between the accuracy
that can be achieved with (ε, 0)-differential privacy in the multiparty
and single curator cases in Theorem 9.2 is due to McGregor et al. [58].
The initial results regarding whether computational assumptions on
the adversary buys anything in the case of a trusted curator are due
to Groce et al. [37].
Construction of pseudorandom functions from any one-way functionis due to Håstad et al. [40].

10Differential Privacy and Mechanism Design

One of the most fascinating areas of game theory is mechanism design,
which is the science of designing incentives to get people to do what you
want them to do. Differential privacy has proven to have interesting
connections to mechanism design in a couple of unexpected ways. It
provides a tool to quantify and control privacy loss, which is important
if the people the mechanism designer is attempting to manipulate careabout privacy. However, it also provides a way to limit the sensitivityof the outcome of a mechanism to the choices of any single person,
which turns out to be a powerful tool even in the absence of privacy
concerns. In this section, we give a brief survey of some of these ideas.
Mechanism Design is the problem of algorithm design when the
inputs to the algorithm are controlled by individual, self-interested
agents, rather than the algorithm designer himself. The algorithm maps
its reported inputs to some outcome, over which the agents have preferences. The difficulty is that the agents may mis-report their data if
doing so will cause the algorithm to output a different, preferred outcome, and so the mechanism designer must design the algorithm sothat the agents are always incentivized to report their true data.

189

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Differential Privacy and Mechanism Design

The concerns of mechanism design are very similar to the concernsof private algorithm design. In both cases, the inputs to the algorithm
are thought of as belonging to some third party1 which has preferences
over the outcome. In mechanism design, we typically think of individuals as getting some explicit value from the outcomes of the mechanism. In private algorithm design, we typically think of the individualas experiencing some explicit harm from (consequences of) outcomesof the mechanism. Indeed, we can give a utility-theoretic definition ofdifferential privacy which is equivalent to the standard definition, but
makes the connection to individual utilities explicit:
Definition 10.1. An algorithm A : N|X | → R is -differentially private
if for every function f : R → R+ , and for every pair of neighboring
databases x, y ∈ N|X | :exp(−)Ez∼A(y) [f (z)] ≤ Ez∼A(x) [f (z)] ≤ exp()Ez∼A(y) [f (z)].
We can think of f as being some function mapping outcomes to anarbitrary agent’s utility for those outcomes. With this interpretation,a mechanism is -differentially private, if for every agent it promisesthat their participation in the mechanism cannot affect their expected
future utility by more than a factor of exp() independent of what theirutility function might be.
Let us now give a brief definition of a problem in mechanism design.
A mechanism design problem is defined by several objects. There are n
agents i ∈ [n], and a set of outcomes O. Each agent has a type, ti ∈ T
which is known only to her, and there is a utility function over outcomesu : T × O → [0, 1]. The utility that agent i gets from an outcome o ∈ O
is u(ti , o), which we will often abbreviate as ui (o). We will write t ∈ T n
to denote vectors of all n agent types, with ti denoting the type of agent
i, and t−i ≡ (t1 , . . . , ti−1 , ti+1 , . . . , tn ) denoting the vector of types of
all agents except agent i. The type of an agent i completely specifies
her utility over outcomes — that is, two agents i 6= j such that ti = tj
will evaluate each outcome identically: ui (o) = uj (o) for all o ∈ O.
1

In the privacy setting, the database administrator (such as a hospital) might
already have access to the data itself, but is nevertheless acting so as to protect theinterests of the agents who own the data when it endeavors to protect privacy.

10.1. Differential privacy as a solution concept

191

A mechanism M takes as input a set of reported types, one from eachplayer, and selects an outcome. That is, a mechanism is a mapping
M : T n → O. Agents will choose to report their types strategicallyso as to optimize their utility, possibly taking into account what (theythink) the other agents will be doing. In particular, they need not reporttheir true types to the mechanism. If an agent is always incentivized toreport some type, no matter what her opponents are reporting, thenreporting that type is called a dominant strategy. If reporting one’s
true type is a dominant strategy for every agent, then the mechanism
is called truthful, or equivalently, dominant strategy truthful.
Definition 10.2. Given a mechanism M : T n → O, truthful reportingis an -approximate dominant strategy for player i if for every pair oftypes ti , t0i ∈ T , and for every vector of types t−i :u(ti , M (ti , t−i )) ≥ u(ti , M (t0i , t−i )) − .
If truthful reporting is an -approximate dominant strategy for every
player, we say that M is -approximately dominant strategy truthful.
If  = 0, then M is exactly truthful.
That is, a mechanism is truthful if no agent can improve her utility
by misrepresenting her type, no matter what the other players report.
Here we can immediately observe a syntactic connection to thedefinition of differential privacy. We may identify the type space T
with the data universe X. The input to the mechanism therefore consists of a database of size n, consisting of the reports of each agent.
In fact, when an agent is considering whether she should truthfully
report her type ti or lie, and misreport her type as t0i , she is deciding
which of two databases the mechanism should receive: (t1 , . . . , tn ), or(t1 , . . . , ti−1 , t0i , ti+1 , . . . , tn ). Note that these two databases differ onlyin the report of agent i! That is, they are neighboring databases. Thus,
differential privacy gives a guarantee of approximate truthfulness!

10.1

Differential privacy as a solution concept

One of the starting points for investigating the connection between differential privacy and game theory is observing that differential privacy

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Differential Privacy and Mechanism Design

is a stronger condition than approximate truthfulness. Note that for ≤ 1, exp() ≤ 1 + 2 and so the following proposition is immediate.
Proposition 10.1. If a mechanism M is -differentially private, thenM is also 2-approximately dominant strategy truthful.
As a solution concept, this has several robustness properties thatstrategy proof mechanisms do not. By the composition property ofdifferential privacy, the composition of 2 -differentially private mechanisms remains 4-approximately dominant strategy truthful. In contrast, the incentive properties of general strategy proof mechanisms
may not be preserved under composition.
Another useful property of differential privacy as a solution concept is that it generalizes to group privacy: suppose that t and t0 ∈T n are not neighbors, but instead differ in k indices. Recall thatby group privacy we then have for any player i: Eo∼M (t) [ui (o)] ≤exp(k)Eo∼M (t0 ) [ui (o)]. That is, changes in up to k types changes the
expected output by at most ≈ (1+k), when k  1/. Therefore, differentially private mechanisms make truthful reporting a 2k-approximate
dominant strategy even for coalitions of k agents — i.e., differential privacy automatically provides robustness to collusion. Again, this is incontrast to general dominant-strategy truthful mechanisms, which ingeneral offer no guarantees against collusion.
Notably, differential privacy allows for these properties in very general settings without the use of money! In contrast, the set of exactly
dominant strategy truthful mechanisms when monetary transfers are
not allowed is extremely limited.
We conclude with a drawback of using differential privacy as a solution concept as stated: not only is truthfully reporting one’s type anapproximate dominant strategy, any report is an approximate dominant strategy! That is, differential privacy makes the outcome approximately independent of any single agent’s report. In some settings, thisshortcoming can be alleviated. For example, suppose that M is a differentially private mechanism, but that agent utility functions are defined
to be functions both of the outcome of the mechanism, and of thereported type t0i of the agent: formally, we view the outcome space as
O0 = O × T . When the agent reports type t0i to the mechanism, and10.2. Differential privacy as a tool in mechanism design193

the mechanism selects outcome o ∈ O, then the utility experienced by
the agent is controlled by the outcome o0 = (o, t0i ). Now consider theunderlying utility function u : T × O0 → [0, 1]. Suppose we have thatfixing a selection o of the mechanism, truthful reporting is a dominant
strategy — that is, for all types ti , t0i , and for all outcomes o ∈ O:u(ti , (o, ti )) ≥ u(ti , (o, t0i )).
Then it remains the fact that truthful reporting to an -differentiallyprivate mechanism M : T n → O remains a 2 approximate dominant
strategy, because for any misreport t0i that player i might consider, wehave:u(ti , (M (t), ti )) = Eo∼M (t) [u(ti , (o, ti ))]≥ (1 + 2)Eo∼M (t0i ,t−i ) [u(ti , (o, ti ))]≥ Eo∼M (t0i ,t−i ) [u(ti , (o, t0i ))]= u(ti , (M (t0i , t−i ), t0i )).
However, we no longer have that every report is an approximate
dominant strategy, because player i’s utility can depend arbitrarily on
o0 = (o, t0i ), and only o (and not player i’s report t0i itself) is differentiallyprivate. This will be the case in all examples we consider here.

10.2

Differential privacy as a tool in mechanism design

In this section, we show how the machinery of differential privacy canbe used as a tool in designing novel mechanisms.
10.2.1

Warmup: digital goods auctions

To warm up, let us consider a simple special case of the first applicationof differential privacy in mechanism design. Consider a digital goods
auction, i.e., one where the seller has an unlimited supply of a goodwith zero marginal cost to produce, for example a piece of softwareor other digital media. There are n unit demand buyers for this good,each with unknown valuation vi ∈ [0, 1]. Informally, the valuation vi
of a bidder i represents the maximum amount of money that buyer i194

Differential Privacy and Mechanism Design

would be willing to pay for a good. There is no prior distribution on
the bidder valuations, so a natural revenue benchmark is the revenueof the best fixed price. At a price p ∈ [0, 1], each bidder i with vi ≥ pwill buy. Therefore the total revenue of the auctioneer is
Rev(p, v) = p · |{i : vi ≥ p}|.
The optimal revenue is the revenue of the best fixed price: OPT =maxp Rev(p, v). This setting is well studied: the best known result forexactly dominant strategy truthful mechanisms is a mechanism which√
achieves revenue at least OPT − O( n).
We show how a simple application
the exponential mechanism
 of 
achieves revenue at least OPT − O log n . That is, the mechanism
trades exact for approximate truthfulness, but achieves an exponentially better revenue guarantee. Of course, it also inherits the benefitsof differential privacy discussed previously, such as resilience to collusion, and composability.
The idea is to select a price from the exponential mechanism,
using as our “quality score” the revenue that this price would obtain.
Suppose we choose the range of the exponential mechanism to be
R = {α, 2α, . . . , 1}. The size of the range is |R| = 1/α. What have
we lost in potential revenue if we restrict ourselves to selecting a pricefrom R? It is not hard to see that
OPTR ≡ max Rev(p, v) ≥ OPT − αn.
p∈RThis is because if p∗ is the price that achieves the optimal revenue, andwe use a price p such that p∗ − α ≤ p ≤ p∗ , every buyer who bought
at the optimal price continues to buy, and provides us with at most α
less revenue per buyer. Since there are at most n buyers, the total lost
revenue is at most αn.
So how do we parameterize the exponential mechanism? We have afamily of discrete ranges R, parameterized by α. For a vector of valuesv and a price p ∈ R, we define our quality function to be q(v, p) =Rev(v, p). Observe that because each value vi ∈ [0, 1], we can restrict
attention to prices p ≤ 1 and hence, the sensitivity of q is ∆ = 1:changing one bidder valuation can only change the revenue at a fixed10.2. Differential privacy as a tool in mechanism design

195

price by at most vi ≤ 1. Therefore, if we require -differential privacy,
by Theorem 3.11, we get that with high probability, the exponential
mechanism returns some price p such that11ln
Rev(p, v) ≥ (OPT − αn) − O

α


 

.

Choosing our discretization parameter α to minimize the two sourcesof error, we find that this mechanism with high probability finds us aprice that achieves revenue
Rev(p, v) ≥ OPT − O

log n
.



What is the right level to choose for the privacy parameter ? Notethat here, we do not necessarily view privacy itself as a goal of ourcomputation. Rather,  is a way of trading off the revenue guaranteewith an upper bound on agent’s incentives to deviate. In the literatureon large markets in economics, a common goal when exact truthfulness
is out of reach is “asymptotic truthfulness” – that is, the maximum
incentive that any agent has to deviate from his truthful report tend
to 0 as the size of the market n grows large. To achieve a result likethat here, all we need to do is set  to be some diminishing function in
the number of agents n. For example, if we take  = 1/ log(n), then we
obtain a mechanism that is asymptotically exactly truthful (i.e., as themarket grows large, the approximation to truthfulness becomes exact).
We can also ask what our approximation to the optimal revenue is as
n grows large. Note that our approximation to the optimal revenue isonly additive, and so even with this setting of , we can still guaranteerevenue at least (1 − o(1))OPT, so long as OPT grows more quickly
than log(n)2 with the size of the population n.
Finally, notice that we could make the reported value vi of eachagent i binding. In other words, we could allocate an item to agent iand extract payment of the selected posted price p whenever vi ≥ p. If
we do this, the mechanism is approximately truthful, because the priceis picked using a differentially private mechanism. Additionally, it is
not the case that every report is an approximate dominant strategy:
if an agent over-reports, she may be forced to buy the good at a pricehigher than her true value.

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10.2.2Differential Privacy and Mechanism Design
Approximately truthful equilibrium selection mechanisms

We now consider the problem of approximately truthful equilibrium
selection. We recall the definition of a Nash Equilibrium: Suppose eachplayer has a set of actions A, and can choose to play any action ai ∈ A.
Suppose, moreover, that outcomes are merely choices of actions that theagents might choose to play, and so agent utility functions are defined
as u : T × An → [0, 1]. Then:
Definition 10.3. A set of actions a ∈ An is an -approximate Nashequilibrium if for all players i and for all actions a0i :ui (a) ≥ ui (a0i , a−i ) − 
In other words, every agent is simultaneously playing an (approximate)best response to what the other agents are doing, assuming they areplaying according to a.
Roughly speaking, the problem is as follows: suppose we are givena game in which each player knows their own payoffs, but not others’
payoffs (i.e., the players do not know what the types are of the otheragents). The players therefore do not know the equilibrium structureof this game. Even if they did, there might be multiple equilibria, withdifferent agents preferring different equilibria. Can a mechanism offeredby an intermediary incentivize agents to truthfully report their utilities
and follow the equilibrium it selects?
For example, imagine a city in which (say) Google Navigation isthe dominant service. Every morning, each person enters their starting
point and destination, receives a set of directions, and chooses his/herroute according to those directions. Is it possible to design a navigation service such that: Each agent is incentivized to both (1) report
truthfully, and (2) then follow the driving directions provided? Bothmisreporting start and end points, and truthfully reporting start andend points, but then following a different (shorter) path are to be disincentivized.
Intuitively, our two desiderata are in conflict. In the commuting
example above, if we are to guarantee that every player is incentivized
to truthfully follow their suggested route, then we must compute an10.2. Differential privacy as a tool in mechanism design

197

equilibrium of the game in question given players’ reports. On the other
hand, to do so, our suggested route to some player i must depend on
the reported location/destination pairs of other players. This tension
will pose a problem in terms of incentives: if we compute an equilibriumof the game given the reports of the players, an agent can potentiallybenefit by misreporting, causing us to compute an equilibrium of thewrong game.
This problem would be largely alleviated, however, if the report ofagent i only has a tiny effect on the actions of agents j 6= i. In thiscase, agent i could hardly gain an advantage through his effect on otherplayers. Then, assuming that everyone truthfully reported their type,the mechanism would compute an equilibrium of the correct game, andby definition, each agent i could do no better than follow the suggested
equilibrium action. In other words, if we could compute an approximate equilibrium of the game under the constraint of differential privacy, then truthful reporting, followed by taking the suggested actionof the coordination device would be a Nash equilibrium. A moment’s
reflection reveals that the goal of privately computing an equilibrium
is not possible in small games, in which an agent’s utility is a highly
sensitive function of the actions (and hence utility functions) of theother agents. But what about in large games?
Formally, suppose we have an n player game with action set A, andeach agent with type ti has a utility function ui : An → [0, 1]. We saythat this game is ∆-large if for all players i 6= j, vectors of actionsa ∈ An , and pairs of actions aj , a0j ∈ A:
ui (aj , a−j ) − ui (a0j , a−j ) ≤ ∆.
In other words, if some agent j unilaterally changes his action, then his
affect on the payoff of any other agent i 6= j is at most ∆. Note that if
agent j changes his own action, then his payoff can change arbitrarily.
Many games are “large” in this sense. In the commuting example above,
if Alice changes her route to work she may substantially increase or
decrease her commute time, but will only have a minimal impact on
the commute time of any other agent Bob. The results in this section
are strongest for ∆ = O(1/n), but hold more generally.

198

Differential Privacy and Mechanism DesignFirst we might ask whether we need privacy at all— could it be thecase that in a large game, any algorithm which computes an equilibriumof a game defined by reported types has the stability property that wewant? The answer is no. As a simple example, consider n people whomust each choose whether to go to the beach (B) or the mountains (M).
People privately know their types— each person’s utility depends on
his own type, his action, and the fraction of other people p who go to
the beach. A Beach type gets a payoff of 10p if he visits the beach, and5(1 − p) if he visits the mountain. A mountain type gets a payoff 5p
from visiting the beach, and 10(1 − p) from visiting the mountain. Notethat this is a large (i.e., low sensitivity) game — each player’s payoffs
are insensitive in the actions of others. Further, note that “everyone
visits beach” and “everyone visits mountain” are both equilibria of thegame, regardless of the realization of types. Consider the mechanismthat attempts to implement the following social choice rule— “if thenumber of beach types is less than half the population, send everyone
to the beach, and vice versa.” It should be clear that if mountain types
are just in the majority, then each mountain type has an incentive to
misreport as a beach type; and vice versa. As a result, even though
the game is “large” and agents’ actions do not affect others’ payoffs
significantly, simply computing equilibria from reported type profiles
does not in general lead to even approximately truthful mechanisms.
Nevertheless, it turns out to be possible to give a mechanism withthe following property: it elicits the type ti of each agent, and then computes an α-approximate correlated equilibrium of the game defined by
the reported types.2 (In some cases, it is possible to strengthen thisresult to compute an approximate Nash equilibrium of the underlying
game.) It draws an action profile a ∈ An from the correlated equilibrium, and reports action ai to each agent i. The algorithm has theguarantee that simultaneously for all players i, the joint distribution
a−i on reports to all players other than i is differentially private in2
A correlated equilibrium is defined by a joint distribution on profiles of actions,An . For an action profile a drawn from the distribution, if agent i is told only ai ,then playing action ai is a best response given the induced conditional distribution
over a−i . An α-approximate correlated equilibrium is one where deviating improves
an agent’s utility by at most α.

10.2. Differential privacy as a tool in mechanism design

199

the reported type of agent i. When the algorithm computes a correlated equilibrium of the underlying game, this guarantee is sufficient
for a restricted form of approximate truthfulness: agents who have theoption to opt-in or opt-out of the mechanism (but not to misreporttheir type if they opt-in) have no disincentive to opt-out, because noagent i can substantially change the distribution on actions induced on
the other players by opting out. Moreover, given that he opts in, no
agent has incentive not to follow his suggested action, as his suggestionis part of a correlated equilibrium. When the mechanism computes aNash equilibrium of the underlying game, then the mechanism becomes
truthful even when agents have the ability to mis-report their type tothe mechanism when they opt in.
More specifically, when these mechanisms compute an αapproximate Nash equilibrium while satisfying -differential privacy,
every agent following the honest behavior (i.e., first opting in andreporting their true type, then following their suggested action) forms
an (2 + α)-approximate Nash equilibrium. This is because, by privacy, reporting your true type is a 2-approximate dominant strategy, and given that everybody reports their true type, the mechanism
computes an α-approximate equilibrium of the true game, and henceby definition, following the suggested action is an α-approximate best
response. There exist mechanisms for computing
and α-approximate
1√equilibrium in large games with α = O n . Therefore, by setting1
 = O n1/4
, this gives an η-approximately truthful equilibrium selection mechanism for1
η = 2 + α = O.
n1/4
In other words, it gives a mechanism for coordinating equilibrium
behavior in large games that is asymptotically truthful in the size ofthe game, all without the need for monetary transfers.

10.2.3

Obtaining exact truthfulness

So far we have discussed mechanisms that are asymptotically truthfulin large population games. However, what if we want to insist on mechanisms that are exactly dominant strategy truthful, while maintaining

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Differential Privacy and Mechanism Design

some of the nice properties enjoyed by our mechanisms so far: for example, that the mechanisms do not need to be able to extract monetary
payments? Can differential privacy help here? It can—in this section,
we discuss a framework which uses differentially private mechanisms asa building block toward designing exactly truthful mechanisms without
money.
The basic idea is simple and elegant. As we have seen, the exponential mechanism can often give excellent utility guarantees while
preserving differential privacy. This doesn’t yield an exactly truthfulmechanism, but it gives every agent very little incentive to deviate
from truthful behavior. What if we could pair this with a second mechanism which need not have good utility guarantees, but gives each agent
a strict positive incentive to report truthfully, i.e., a mechanism thatessentially only punishes non-truthful behavior? Then, we could randomize between running the two mechanisms. If we put enough weighton the punishing mechanism, then we inherit its strict-truthfulness
properties. The remaining weight that is put on the exponential mechanism contributes to the utility properties of the final mechanism. The
hope is that since the exponential mechanism is approximately strategy
proof to begin with, the randomized mechanism can put small weighton the strictly truthful punishing mechanism, and therefore will havegood utility properties.
To design punishing mechanisms, we will have to work in a slightly
non-standard environment. Rather than simply picking an outcome, we
can model a mechanism as picking an outcome, and then an agent aschoosing a reaction to that outcome, which together define his utility.
Mechanisms will then have the power to restrict the reactions allowedby the agent based on his reported type. Formally, we will work in thefollowing framework:
Definition 10.4 (The Environment). An environment is a set N of nplayers, a set of types ti ∈ T , a finite set O of outcomes, a set ofreactions R and a utility function u : T × O × R → [0, 1].
We write ri (t, s, R̂i ) ∈ arg maxr∈R̂i ui (t, s, r) to denote is optimal
reaction among choices R̂i ⊆ R to alternative s if he is of type t.

10.2. Differential privacy as a tool in mechanism design

201

A direct revelation mechanism M defines a game which is played
as follows:
1. Each player i reports a type t0i ∈ T .
2. The mechanism chooses an alternative s ∈ O and a subset R̂i ⊆ R
of reactions, for each player i.
3. Each player i chooses a reaction ri ∈ R̂i and experiences utilityu(ti , s, ri ).
Agents play so as to maximize their own utility. Note that since there
is no further interaction after the 3rd step, rational agents will pickri = ri (ti , s, R̂i ), and so we can ignore this as a strategic step. Let
R = 2R . Then a mechanism is a randomized mapping M : T → O×Rn .
Let us consider the utilitarian welfare criterion: F (t, s, r) =1 Pn
i=1 u(ti , s, ri ), Note that this has sensitivity ∆ = 1/n, since eachnagent’s utility lies in the range [0, 1]. Hence, if we simply choose an outcome s and allow each agent to play their best response reaction, theexponential mechanism is an -differentially private mechanism, whichby Theorem 3.11, achieves social welfare at least OPT − O logn|O|with high probability. Let us denote this instantiation of the exponential mechanism, with quality score F , range O and privacy parameter, as M .
The idea is to randomize between the exponential mechanism (withgood social welfare properties) and a strictly truthful mechanism which
punishes false reporting (but with poor social welfare properties). If wemix appropriately, then we will get an exactly truthful mechanism withreasonable social welfare guarantees.
Here is one such punishing mechanism which is simple, but notnecessarily the best for a given problem:
Definition 10.5. The commitment mechanism M P (t0 ) selects s ∈ O
uniformly at random and sets R̂i = {ri (t0i , s, Ri )}, i.e., it picks a random
outcome and forces everyone to react as if their reported type was theirtrue type.
Define the gap of an environment as
γ=

min
0

max u(ti , s, ri (ti , s, Ri )) − u(ti , s, ri (t0i , s, Ri )) ,i,ti 6=ti ,t−i s∈O



202

Differential Privacy and Mechanism Designi.e., γ is a lower bound over players and types of the worst-case cost(over s) of mis-reporting. Note that for each player, this worst-case isrealized with probability at least 1/|O|. Therefore we have the following
simple observation:
Lemma 10.2. For all i, ti , t0i , t−i :u(ti , MP (ti , t−i )) ≥ u(ti , MP (t0i , t−i )) +

γ
.
|O|

Note that the commitment mechanism is strictly truthful: everyγ
individual has at least a |O|
incentive not to lie.
This suggests an exactly truthful mechanism with good social welfare guarantees:
Definition 10.6. The punishing exponential mechanism MP (t) definedwith parameter 0 ≤ q ≤ 1 selects the exponential mechanism M (t)with probability 1 − q and the punishing mechanism MP (t) with complementary probability q.
Observe that by linearity of expectation, we have for all ti , t0i , t−i :u(ti , MP (ti , t−i )) = (1 − q) · u(ti , M (ti , t−i )) + q · u(ti , MP (ti , t−i ))≥ (1 − q) u(ti , M (t0i , t−i )) − 2+q u(ti , MP (t0i , t−i )) +

γ
|O|



= u(ti , MP (t0i , t−i )) − (1 − q)2 + q

= u(ti , MP (t0i , t−i )) − 2 + q 2 +

γ
|O|
γ
.
|O|


The following two theorems show incentive and social welfare properties of this mechanism.
qγ
Theorem 10.3. If 2 ≤ |O|then MP is strictly truthful.

10.2. Differential privacy as a tool in mechanism design203

Note that we also have utility guarantees for this mechanism. Setting the parameter q so that we have a truthful mechanism:
Es,R̂∼MP [F (t, s, r(t, s, R̂))]≥ (1 − q) · Es,R̂∼M [F (t, s, r(t, s, R̂))]


= 1−

2|O|
γ

2|O|
≥ 1−
γ




· Es,R̂∼M [F (t, s, r(t, s, R̂))]1
log |O|· max F (t, s, r) − O
t,s,r
n

 





2|O|
1
≥ max F (t, s, r) −−O
log |O| .
t,s,r
γ
n




Settings∈Olog |O|γ|O|n!

we find:s

Es,R̂∼MP [F (t, s, r(t, s, R̂))] ≥ max F (t, s, r) − O


t,s,r

!

|O| log |O|.
γnNote that in this calculation, we assume that  ≤ γ/(2|O|) so that
≤ 1 and the mechanism is well defined. This is true for
q = 2|O|γ
sufficiently large n. That is, we have shown:
Theorem 10.4. For sufficiently large n, MP achieves social welfare at
least
s
!
|O| log |O|
OPT − O.
γnNote that this mechanism is truthful without the need for payments!
Let us now consider an application of this framework: the facility location game. Suppose that a city wants to build k hospitals tominimize the average distance between each citizen and their closest hospital. To simplify matters, we make the mild assumption thatthe city is built on a discretization of the unit line.3 Formally, let3

If this is not the case, we can easily raze and then re-build the city.

204

Differential Privacy and Mechanism Design

1 2
L(m) = {0, m, m , . . . , 1} denote the discrete unit line with step-size
1/m. |L(m)| = m+1. Let T = Ri = L(m) for all i and let |O| = L(m)k .
Define the utility of agent i to be:(u(ti , s, ri ) =−|ti − ri |, If ri ∈ s;−1,otherwise.

In other words, agents are associated with points on the line, and an
outcome is an assignment of a location on the line to each of the kfacilities. Agents can react to a set of facilities by deciding which one
to go to, and their cost for such a decision is the distance between theirown location (i.e., their type) and the facility that they have chosen.
Note that ri (ti , s) is here the closest facility ri ∈ s.
We can instantiate Theorem 10.4. In this case, we have: |O| =(m + 1)k and γ = 1/m, because any two positions ti 6= t0i differ by atleast 1/m. Hence, we have:
Theorem 10.5. MP instantiated for the facility location game isstrictly truthful and achieves social welfare at least:sOPT − O km(m + 1)k log m .
nThis is already very good for small numbers of facilities k, since we
expect that OPT = Ω(1).

10.3

Mechanism design for privacy aware agentsIn the previous section, we saw that differential privacy can be useful asa tool to design mechanisms, for agents who care only about the outcomechosen by the mechanism. We here primarily viewed privacy as a tool
to accomplish goals in traditional mechanism design. As a side affect,these mechanisms also preserved the privacy of the reported player
types. Is this itself a worthy goal? Why might we want our mechanisms
to preserve the privacy of agent types?
A bit of reflection reveals that agents might care about privacy.
Indeed, basic introspection suggests that in the real world, agents value
the ability to keep certain “sensitive” information private, for example,

10.3. Mechanism design for privacy aware agents

205

health information or sexual preferences. In this section, we consider thequestion of how to model this value for privacy, and various approaches
taken in the literature.
Given that agents might have preferences for privacy, it is worth
considering the design of mechanisms that preserve privacy as an additional goal, even for tasks such as welfare maximization that we canalready solve non-privately. As we will see, it is indeed possible togeneralize the VCG mechanism to privately approximately optimizesocial welfare in any social choice problem, with a smooth trade-off
between the privacy parameter and the approximation parameter, allwhile guaranteeing exact dominant strategy truthfulness.
However, we might wish to go further. In the presence of agents withpreferences for privacy, if we wish to design truthful mechanisms, wemust somehow model their preferences for privacy in their utility function, and then design mechanisms which are truthful with respect tothese new “privacy aware” utility functions. As we have seen with differential privacy, it is most natural to model privacy as a property of themechanism itself. Thus, our utility functions are not merely functionsof the outcome, but functions of the outcome and of the mechanism
itself. In almost all models, agent utilities for outcomes are treated aslinearly separable, that is, we will have for each agent i,ui (o, M, t) ≡ µi (o) − ci (o, M, t).
Here µi (o) represents agent is utility for outcome o and ci (o, M, t) the(privacy) cost that agent i experiences when outcome o is chosen withmechanism M.
We will first consider perhaps the simplest (and most naïve) modelfor the privacy cost function ci . Recall that for   1, differential
privacy promises that for each agent i, and for every possible utility
function fi , type vector t ∈ T n , and deviation t0i ∈ T :|Eo∼M (ti ,t−i ) [fi (o)] − Eo∼M (t0i ,t−i ) [fi (o)]| ≤ 2Eo∼M (t) [fi (o)].
If we view fi as representing the “expected future utility” for agent i,
it is therefore natural to model agent i’s cost for having his data usedin an -differentially private computation as being linear in . That is,206

Differential Privacy and Mechanism Design

we think of agent i as being parameterized by some value vi ∈ R, andtake:ci (o, M, t) = vi ,where  is the smallest value such that M is -differentially private.
Here we imagine vi to represent a quantity like Eo∼M (t) [fi (o)]. In thissetting, ci does not depend on the outcome o or the type profile t.
Using this naïve privacy measure, we discuss a basic problem inprivate data analysis: how to collect the data, when the owners ofthe data value their privacy and insist on being compensated for it.
In this setting, there is no “outcome” that agents value, other thanpayments, there is only dis-utility for privacy loss. We will then discussshortcomings of this (and other) measures of the dis-utility for privacy
loss, as well as privacy in more general mechanism design settings when
agents do have utility for the outcome of the mechanism.

10.3.1

A private generalization of the VCG mechanism

Suppose we have a general social choice problem, defined by an outcome
space O, and a set of agents N with arbitrary preferences over theoutcomes given by ui : O → [0, 1]. We might want to choose an outcomePo ∈ O to maximize the social welfare F (o) = n1 ni=1 ui (o). It is wellknown that in any such setting, the VCG mechanism can implement theoutcome o∗ which exactly maximizes the social welfare, while charging
payments that make truth-telling a dominant strategy. What if we wantto achieve the same result, while also preserving privacy? How must theprivacy parameter  trade off with our approximation to the optimalsocial welfare?
Recall that we could use the exponential mechanism to choose
an outcome o ∈ O, with quality score F . For privacy parameter, thisgive a distribution M defined to be Pr[M = o] ∝ wouldF (o)
exp 2n . Moreover, this mechanism has good social welfare properties: with probability
1 − β, it selects some o such that: F (o) ≥

|O|
2
∗
F (o ) − n ln β . But as we saw, differential privacy only gives
-approximate truthfulness.

10.3. Mechanism design for privacy aware agents

207

However, it can be shown that M is the solution to the following
exact optimization problem:M = arg max

D∈∆O2
H(D) ,
n

Eo∼D [F (o)] +where H represents the Shannon Entropy of the distribution D. In otherwords, the exponential mechanism is the distribution which exactly
maximizes the expected social welfare, plus the entropy of the distribution weighted by 2/(n). This is significant for the following reason:
it is known that any mechanism that exactly maximizes expected player
utilities in any finite range (known as maximal in distributional range
mechanisms) can be paired with payments to be made exactly dominant strategy truthful. The exponential mechanism is the distributionthat exactly maximizes expected social welfare, plus entropy. In otherwords, if we imagine that we have added a single additional player
whose utility is exactly the entropy of the distribution, then the exponential mechanism is maximal in distributional range. Hence, it can bepaired with payments that make truthful reporting a dominant strategy
for all players — in particular, for the n real players. Moreover, it canbe shown how to charge payments in such a way as to preserve privacy.
The upshot is that for any social choice problem, the social welfare canbe approximated in a manner that both preserves differential privacy,
and is exactly truthful.
10.3.2The sensitive surveyor’s problem

In this section, we consider the problem of a data analyst who wishes
to conduct a study using the private data of a collection of individuals.
However, he must convince these individuals to hand over their data!
Individuals experience costs for privacy loss. The data analyst can mitigate these costs by guaranteeing differential privacy and compensatingthem for their loss, while trying to get a representative sample of data.
Consider the following stylized problem of the sensitive surveyor
Alice. She is tasked with conducting a survey of a set of n individuals
N , to determine what proportion of the individuals i ∈ N satisfy someproperty P (i). Her ultimate goal is to discover the true value of thisstatistic, s = n1 |{i ∈ N : P (i)}|, but if that is not possible, she will be

208

Differential Privacy and Mechanism Design

satisfied with some estimate ŝ such that the error, |ŝ − s|, is minimized.
We will adopt a notion of accuracy based on large deviation bounds,
and say that a surveying mechanism is α-accurate if Pr[|ŝ−s| ≥ α] ≤ 13 .
The inevitable catch is that individuals value their privacy and will notparticipate in the survey for free. Individuals experience some cost as afunction of their loss in privacy when they interact with Alice, and must
be compensated for this loss. To make matters worse, these individuals
are rational (i.e., selfish) agents, and are apt to misreport their costs
to Alice if doing so will result in a financial gain. This places Alice’s
problem squarely in the domain of mechanism design, and requires
Alice to develop a scheme for trading off statistical accuracy with cost,
all while managing the incentives of the individuals.
As an aside, this stylized problem is broadly relevant to any organization that makes use of collections of potentially sensitive data. This
includes, for example, the use of search logs to provide search querycompletion and the use of browsing history to improve search engine
ranking, the use of social network data to select display ads and torecommend new links, and the myriad other data-driven services now
available on the web. In all of these cases, value is being derived fromthe statistical properties of a collection of sensitive data in exchange
for some payment.4
Collecting data in exchange for some fixed price could lead to abiased estimate of population statistics, because such a scheme will
result in collecting data only from those individuals who value theirprivacy less than the price being offered. However, without interactingwith the agents, we have no way of knowing what price we can offer
so that we will have broad enough participation to guarantee that theanswer we collect has only small bias. To obtain an accurate estimateof the statistic, it is therefore natural to consider buying private datausing an auction — as a means of discovering this price. There are two
obvious obstacles which one must confront when conducting an auction
for private data, and an additional obstacle which is less obvious but
more insidious. The first obstacle is that one must have a quantitative
4

The payment need not be explicit and/or dollar denominated — for example,
it may be the use of a “free” service.

10.3. Mechanism design for privacy aware agents

209formalization of “privacy” which can be used to measure agents’ costs
under various operations on their data. Here, differential privacy provides an obvious tool. For small values of , because exp() ≈ (1 + ),and so as discussed earlier, a simple (but possibly naive) first cut at amodel is to view each agent as having some linear cost for participating
in a private study. We here imagine that each agent i has an unknown
value for privacy vi , and experiences a cost ci () = vi when his private
data is used in an -differentially private manner.5 The second obstacleis that our objective is to trade off with statistical accuracy, and thelatter is not well-studied objective in mechanism design.
The final, more insidious obstacle, is that an individual’s cost for
privacy loss may be highly correlated with his private data itself! Suppose we only know Bob has a high value for privacy of his AIDS status,
but do not explicitly know his AIDS status itself. This is already disclosive because Bob’s AIDS status is likely correlated with his value forprivacy, and knowing that he has a high cost for privacy lets us update
our belief about what his private data might be. More to the point,
suppose that in the first step of a survey of AIDS prevalence, we ask
each individual to report their value for privacy, with the intention ofthen running an auction to choose which individuals to buy data from.
If agents report truthfully, we may find that the reported values naturally form two clusters: low value agents, and high value agents. In thiscase, we may have learned something about the population statistic
even before collecting any data or making any payments— and therefore, the agents will have already experienced a cost. As a result, theagents may misreport their value, which could introduce a bias in thesurvey results. This phenomenon makes direct revelation mechanisms
problematic, and distinguishes this problem from classical mechanism
design.
Armed with a means of quantifying an agent i’s loss for allowing hisdata to be used by an -differentially-private algorithm (ci () = vi ),we are almost ready to describe results for the sensitive surveyor’s
problem. Recall that a differentially private algorithm is some mapping
M : T n → O, for a general type space T . It remains to define what
5

As we will discuss later, this assumption can be problematic.

210

Differential Privacy and Mechanism Design

exactly the type space T is. We will consider two models. In bothmodels, we will associate with each individual a bit bi ∈ {0, 1} which
represents whether they satisfy the sensitive predicate P (i), as well as
a value for privacy vi ∈ R+ .
1. In the insensitive value model, we calculate the  parameter of theprivate mechanism by letting the type space be T = {0, 1}: i.e.,
we measure privacy cost only with respect to how the mechanism
treats the sensitive bit bi , and ignore how it treats the reported
values for privacy, vi .6
2. In the sensitive value model, we calculate the  parameter of theprivate mechanism by letting the type space be T = ({0, 1}×R+ ):i.e., we measure privacy with respect to how it treats the pair(bi , vi ) for each individual.
Intuitively, the insensitive value model treats individuals as ignoring
the potential privacy loss due to correlations between their values forprivacy and their private bits, whereas the sensitive value model treats
individuals as assuming these correlations are worst-case, i.e., theirvalues vi are just as disclosive as their private bits bi . It is known thatin the insensitive value model, one can derive approximately optimal
direct revelation mechanisms that achieve high accuracy and low cost.
By contrast, in the sensitive value model, no individually rational directrevelation mechanism can achieve any non-trivial accuracy.
This leaves a somewhat unsatisfying state of affairs. The sensitive
value model captures the delicate issues that we really want to deal
with, and yet there we have an impossibility result! Getting aroundthis result in a satisfying way (e.g., by changing the model, or the
powers of the mechanism) remains an intriguing open question.
10.3.3Better measures for the cost of privacy

In the previous section, we took the naive modeling assumption that thecost experienced by participation in an -differentially private mechanism M was ci (o, M, t) = vi for some numeric value vi . This measure
6

That is, the part of the mapping dealing with reported values need not be
differentially private.

10.3. Mechanism design for privacy aware agents

211is problematic for several reasons. First, although differential privacy
promises that any agent’s loss in utility is upper bounded by a quantitythat is (approximately) linear in , there is no reason to believe thatagents’ costs are lower bounded by such a quantity. That is, while taking ci (o, M, t) ≤ vi is well motivated, there is little support for making
the inequality an equality. Second, (it turns out) any privacy measure
which is a deterministic function only of  (not just a linear function)leads to problematic behavioral predictions.
So how else might we model ci ? One natural measure is the mutual
information between the reported type of agent i, and the outcomeof the mechanism. For this to be well defined, we must be in a world
where each agent’s type ti is drawn from a known prior, ti ∼ T . Eachagent’s strategy is a mapping σi : T → T , determining what type hereports, given his true type. We could then defineci (o, M, σ) = I(T ; M(t−i , σ(T )),where I is the mutual information between the random variable T
representing the prior on agent is type, and M(t−i , σ(T )), the randomvariable representing the outcome of the mechanism, given agent is
strategy.
This measure has significant appeal, because it represents how“related” the output of the mechanism is to the true type of agent
i. However, in addition to requiring a prior over agent types, observe
an interesting paradox that results from this measure of privacy loss.
Consider a world in which there are two kinds of sandwich breads: Rye(R), and Wheat (W). Moreover, in this world, sandwich preferences
are highly embarrassing and held private. The prior on types T is uniform over R and W, and the mechanism M simply gives agent i asandwich of the type that he purports to prefer. Now consider two possible strategies, σtruthful and σrandom . σtruthful corresponds to truthfully
reporting sandwich preferences (and subsequently leads to eating thepreferred sandwich type), while σrandom randomly reports independentof true type (and results in the preferred sandwich only half the time).
The cost of using the random strategy is I(T ; M(t−i , σrandom (T )) = 0,
since the output is independent of agent i’s type. On the other hand,the cost of truthfully reporting is I(T ; M(t−i , σtruthful (T )) = 1, since212

Differential Privacy and Mechanism Design

the sandwich outcome is now the identity function on agent is type.
However, from the perspective of any outside observer, the two strategies are indistinguishable! In both cases, agent i receives a uniformly
random sandwich. Why then should anyone choose the random strategy? So long as an adversary believes they are choosing randomly, theyshould choose the honest strategy.
Another approach, which does not need a prior on agent types, is asfollows. We may model agents as having a cost function ci that satisfies:!

Pr[M(ti , t−i ) = o].
|ci (o, M, t)| = ln max
0
ti ,t0i ∈T Pr[M(ti , t−i ) = o]Note that if M is -differentially private, thenmax max max lnt∈T n o∈O ti ,t0i ∈T

Pr[M(ti , t−i ) = o]Pr[M(t0i , t−i ) = o]

!

≤ .

That is, we can view differential privacy as bounding the worst-caseprivacy loss over all possible outcomes, whereas the measure proposed
here considers only the privacy loss for the outcome o (and type vector t) actually realized. Thus, for any differentially private mechanism
M, |ci (o, M, t)| ≤  for all o, t, but it will be important that the costcan vary by outcome.
We can then consider the following allocation rule for maximizingPsocial welfare F (o) = ni=1 ui (o).7 We discuss the case when |O| = 2(which does not require payments), but it is possible to analyze thegeneral case (with payments), which privately implements the VCG
mechanism for any social choice problem.
1. For each outcome o ∈ O, choose a random number ro from the
distribution Pr[ro = x] ∝ exp(−|x|).
2. Output o∗ = arg maxo∈O (F (o) + ro ).
The above mechanism is -differentially private, and that it is truthfulfor privacy aware agents, so long as for each agent i, and for the twooutcomes o, o0 ∈ O, |µi (o) − µi (o0 )| > 2. Note that this will be true
7

This allocation rule is extremely similar to, and indeed can be modified to be
identical to the exponential mechanism.

10.4. Bibliographical notes213

for small enough  so long as agent utilities for outcomes are distinct.
The analysis proceeds by considering an arbitrary fixed realization of
the random variables ro , and an arbitrary deviation t0i from truthfulreporting for the ith agent. There are two cases: In the first case, thedeviation does not change the outcome o of the mechanism. In thiscase, neither the agent’s utility for the outcome µi , nor his cost for
privacy loss ci change at all, and so the agent does not benefit fromdeviating. In the second case, if the outcome changes from o to o0 when
agent i deviates, it must be that µi (o0 ) < µi (o) − 2. By differential
privacy, however, |ci (o, M, t) − ci (o0 , M, t)| ≤ 2, and so the change inprivacy cost cannot be enough to make it beneficial.
Finally, the most conservative approach to modeling costs for privacy generally considered is as follows. Given an -differentially private
mechanism M, assume only thatci (o, M, t) ≤ vi ,for some number vi . This is similar to the linear cost functions that we
considered earlier, but crucially, here we assume only an upper bound.
This assumption is satisfied by all of the other models for privacy costthat we have considered thus far. It can be shown that many mechanisms that combine a differentially private algorithm with a punishingmechanism that has the ability to restrict user choices, like those that
we considered in Section 10.2.3, maintain their truthfulness properties
in the presence of agents with preferences for privacy, so long as thevalues vi are bounded.

10.4

Bibliographical notes

This section is based off of a survey of Pai and Roth [70] and a surveyof Roth [73]. The connections between differential privacy and mechanism design were first suggested by Jason Hartline and investigatedby McSherry and Talwar in their seminal work, “Mechanism Design
via Differential Privacy” [61], where they considered the application ofdifferential privacy to designing approximately truthful digital goods
auctions. The best result for exactly truthful mechanisms in the digital
goods setting is due to Balcan et al. [2].

214

Differential Privacy and Mechanism Design

The problem of designing exactly truthful mechanisms using differential privacy as a tool was first explored by Nissim, Smorodinsky, andTennenholtz in [69], who also first posed a criticism as differential privacy (by itself) used as a solution concept. The example in this sectionof using differential privacy to obtain exactly truthful mechanisms istaken directly from [69]. The sensitive surveyors problem was first considered by Ghosh and Roth [36], and expanded on by [56, 34, 75, 16].
Fleischer and Lyu [34] consider the Bayesian setting discussed in thissection, and Ligett and Roth [56] consider the worst-case setting withtake-it-or-leave-it offers, both in an attempt to get around the impossibility result of [36]. Ghosh and Ligett consider a related model in which
participation decisions (and privacy guarantees) are determined onlyin equilibrium [35].
The question of conducting mechanism design in the presence ofagents who explicitly value privacy as part of their utility function was
first raised by the influential work of Xiao [85], who considered (among
other measures for privacy cost) the mutual information cost function.
Following this, Chen et al. [15] and Nissim et al. [67] showed how in
two distinct models, truthful mechanisms can sometimes be designed
even for agents who value privacy. Chen Chong, Kash, Moran, andVadhan considered the outcome-based cost function that we discussed
in this section, and Nissim, Orlandi, and Smorodinsky considered theconservative model of only upper bounding each agent’s cost by a linear
function in > The “sandwich paradox” of valuing privacy according
to mutual information is due to Nissim, Orlandi, and Smorodinsky.
Huang and Kannan proved that the exponential mechanism could
be made exactly truthful with the addition of payments [49]. Kearns
Pai, Roth, and Ullman showed how differential privacy could be used toderive asymptotically truthful equilibrium selection mechanisms [54] byprivately computing correlated equilibria in large games. These results
were strengthened by Rogers and Roth [71], who showed how to privately compute approximate Nash equilibria in large congestion games,
which leads to stronger incentive properties of the mechanism. Both ofthese papers use the solution concept of “Joint Differential Privacy,”10.4. Bibliographical notes

215

which requires that for every player i, the joint distribution on messages
sent to other players j 6= i be differentially private in is report. Thissolution concept has also proven useful in other settings of private
mechanism design settings, including an algorithm for computing private matchings by Hsu et al. [47].

11
Differential Privacy and Machine Learning

One of the most useful tasks in data analysis is machine learning: theproblem of automatically finding a simple rule to accurately predict certain unknown characteristics of never before seen data. Many machinelearning tasks can be performed under the constraint of differential privacy. In fact, the constraint of privacy is not necessarily at odds withthe goals of machine learning, both of which aim to extract information from the distribution from which the data was drawn, rather thanfrom individual data points. In this section, we survey a few of the mostbasic results on private machine learning, without attempting to cover
this large field completely.
The goal in machine learning is very often similar to the goal in private data analysis. The learner typically wishes to learn some simple
rule that explains a data set. However, she wishes this rule to generalize — that is, it should be that the rule she learns not only correctly
describes the data that she has on hand, but that it should also beable to correctly describe new data that is drawn from the same distribution. Generally, this means that she wants to learn a rule that
captures distributional information about the data set on hand, in a
way that does not depend too specifically on any single data point. Of

216

217
course, this is exactly the goal of private data analysis — to reveal distributional information about the private data set, without revealing
too much about any single individual in the dataset. It should comeas no surprise then that machine learning and private data analysis
are closely linked. In fact, as we will see, we are often able to performprivate machine learning nearly as accurately, with nearly the same
number of examples as we can perform non-private machine learning.
Let us first briefly define the problem of machine learning. Here, wewill follow Valiant’s PAC (Or Probably Approximately Correct) modelof machine learning. Let X = {0, 1}d be the domain of “unlabeled
examples.” Think of each x ∈ X as a vector containing d boolean
attributes. We will think of vectors x ∈ X as being paired with labelsy ∈ {0, 1}.
Definition 11.1. A labeled example is a pair (x, y) ∈ X ×{0, 1}: a vector
paired with a label.
A learning problem is defined as a distribution D over labeled examples. The goal will to be to find a function f : X → {0, 1} that correctly
labels almost all of the examples drawn from the distribution.
Definition 11.2. Given a function f : X → {0, 1} and a distribution
D over labeled examples, the error rate of f on D is:err(f, D) =Pr [f (x) 6= y](x,y)∼D

We can also define the error rate of f over a finite sample D:err(f, D) =1|{(x, y) ∈ D : f (x) 6= y}|.
|D|

A learning algorithm gets to observe some number of labeled examples drawn from D, and has the goal of finding a function f with assmall an error rate as possible when measured on D. Two parameters
in measuring the quality of a learning algorithm are its running time,
and the number of examples it needs to see in order to find a good
hypothesis.
Definition 11.3. An algorithm A is said to PAC-learn a class of functions C over d dimensions if for every α, β > 0, there exists an

218

Differential Privacy and Machine Learningm = poly(d, 1/α, log(1/β)) such that for every distribution D overlabeled examples, A takes as input m labeled examples drawn from D
and outputs a hypothesis f ∈ C such that with probability 1 − β:err(f, D) ≤ minerr(f ∗ , D) + α∗
f ∈C

If minf ∗ ∈C err(f ∗ , D) = 0, the learner is said to operate in therealizable setting (i.e., there exists some function in the class which
perfectly labels the data). Otherwise, the learner is said to operate
in the agnostic setting. If A also has run time that is polynomial ind, 1/α, and log(1/β), then the learner is said to be efficient. If there isan algorithm which PAC-learns C, then C is said to be PAC-learnable.
The above definition of learning allows the learner to have directaccess to labeled examples. It is sometimes also useful to consider models of learning in which the algorithm only has oracle access to somenoisy information about D.
Definition 11.4. A statistical query is some function φ : X × {0, 1} →[0, 1]. A statistical query oracle for a distribution over labeled examτ such that for every statisticalples D with tolerance τ is an oracle OD
query φ:τOD(φ) − E(x,y)∼D [φ(x, y)] ≤ τ

In other words, an SQ oracle takes as input a statistical query φ, andoutputs some value that is guaranteed to be within ±τ of the expectedvalue of φ on examples drawn from D.
The statistical query model of learning was introduced to model
the problem of learning in the presence of noise.
Definition 11.5. An algorithm A is said to SQ-learn a class of functions C over d dimensions if for every α, β > 0 there exists an
m = poly(d, 1/α, log(1/β)) such that A makes at most m queries of tolτ , and with probability 1−β, outputs a hypothesis
erance τ = 1/m to OD
f ∈ C such that:err(f, D) ≤ minerr(f ∗ , D) + α
∗
f ∈C

11.1

Sample complexity of differentially private machine learning

219

Note that an SQ learning algorithm does not get any access to
D except through the SQ oracle. As with PAC learning, we can talkabout an SQ learning algorithm operating in either the realizable or
the agnostic setting, and talk about the computational efficiency of thelearning algorithm. We say that a class C is SQ learnable if there exists
an SQ learning algorithm for C.

11.1

The sample complexity of differentially private
machine learning

Perhaps the first question that one might ask, with respect to therelationship between privacy and learning, is “When is it possible toprivately perform machine learning”? In other words, you might ask
for a PAC learning algorithm that takes as input a dataset (implicitly assumed to be sampled from some distribution D), and thenprivately output a hypothesis f that with high probability has low
error over the distribution. A more nuanced question might be, “Howmany additional samples are required to privately learn, as comparedwith the number of samples already required to learn without the constraint of differential privacy?” Similarly, “How much additional runtime is necessary to privately learn, as compared with the run-time
required to learn non-privately?” We will here briefly sketch known
results for (ε, 0)-differential privacy. In general, better results for (ε, δ)differential privacy will follow from using the advanced composition
theorem.
A foundational information theoretic result in private machinelearning is that private PAC learning is possible with a polynomial number of samples if and only if non-private PAC learning is possible witha polynomial number of samples, even in the agnostic setting. In fact,
the increase in sample complexity necessary is relatively small — however, this result does not preserve computational efficiency. One way to
do this is directly via the exponential mechanism. We can instantiate
the exponential mechanism with a range R = C, equal to the class ofqueries to be learned. Given a database D, we can use the quality score1|{(x, y) ∈ D : f (x) 6= y}|: i.e., we seek to minimize theq(f, D) = − |D|
fraction of misclassified examples in the private dataset. This is clearly

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Differential Privacy and Machine Learning

a 1/n sensitive function of the private data, and so we have via ourutility theorem for the exponential mechanism that with probability
1 − β, this mechanism returns a function f ∈ C that correctly labels an2(log |C|+log 1 )β
OPT −fraction of the points in the database correctly.
εnRecall, however, that in the learning setting, we view the database
D as consisting of n i.i.d. draws from some distribution over labeled
examples D. Recall the discussion of sampling bounds in Lemma 4.3.
A Chernoff bound combined with a union bound tells us that with highprobability, if D consists of n i.i.d. samples
drawn from D, then for allq

f ∈ C: |err(f, D) − err(f, D)| ≤ O( logn|C| ). Hence, if we wish to finda hypothesis that has error within α of the optimal error on the distribution D, it suffices to draw a database D consisting of n ≥ log |C|/α2
samples, and learn the best classifier f ∗ on D.
Now consider the problem of privately PAC learning, using
the exponential mechanism as described above. Recall that, byTheorem 3.11, it is highly unlikely that the exponential mechanism
will return a function f with utility score that is inferior to that of the
optimal f ∗ by more than an additive factor of O((∆u/ε) log |C|), wherein this case ∆u, the sensitivity of the utility function, is 1/n. That is,with high probability the exponential mechanism will return a functionf ∈ C such that:(log |C|)err(f, D) ≤ minerr(f , D) + O
∗
f ∈C
εn


∗

s
∗

≤ min err(f , D) + O 
f ∗ ∈C

log |C| (log |C|)
+O
.
n
εn




Hence, if we wish to find a hypothesis that has error within α of the
optimal error on the distribution D, it suffices to draw a database D
consisting of:log |C| log |C|n ≥ O max
,
εα
α2






,

which is not asymptotically any more than the database size that isrequired for non-private learning, whenever ε ≥ α.

11.1. Sample complexity of differentially private machine learning

221

A corollary of this simple calculation1 is that (ignoring computational efficiency), a class of functions C is PAC learnable if and only if
it is privately PAC learnable.
Can we say something stronger about a concept class C that is SQ
learnable? Observe that if C is efficiently SQ learnable, then the learning algorithm for C need only access the data through an SQ oracle,
which is very amenable to differential privacy: note that an SQ oracle
answers an expectation query defined over a predicate φ(x, y) ∈ [0, 1],E(x,y)∼D [φ(x, y)], which is only 1/n sensitive when estimated on a
database D which is a sample of size n from D. Moreover, the learningalgorithm does not need to receive the answer exactly, but can be runwith any answer a that has the property that: |E(x,y)∼D [φ(x, y)]−a| ≤ τ :that is, the algorithm can be run using noisy answers on low sensitivity
queries. The benefit of this is that we can answer such queries computationally efficiently, using the Laplace mechanism — but at the expenseof requiring a potentially large sample size. Recall that the Laplacemechanism can answer m 1/n sensitive queries with (ε, 0)-differentialmprivacy and with expected worst-case error α = O( m log
εn ). Therefore,
an SQ learning algorithm which requires the answers to m queries withm log maccuracy α can be run with a sample size of n = O(max( m log
εα , α2 )).
Let us compare this to the sample size required for a non-private SQ
learner. If the SQ learner needs to make m queries to tolerance α, thenby a Chernoff bound and a union bound, a sample size of O(log m/α2 )suffices. Note that for ε = O(1) and error α = O(1), the non-private
algorithm potentially requires exponentially fewer samples. However,at the error tolerance α ≤ 1/m as allowed in the definition of SQ learning, the sample complexity for private SQ learning is no worse than thesample complexity for non-private SQ learning, for  = Θ(1).
The upshot is that information theoretically, privacy poses very
little hinderance to machine learning. Moreover, for any algorithm thataccesses the data only though an SQ oracle,2 then the reduction to
1

Together with corresponding lower bounds that show that for general C, it is
not possible to non-privately PAC learn using a sample with o(log |C|/α2 ) points.
2
And in fact, almost every class (with the lone exception of parity functions) offunctions known to be PAC learnable is also learnable using only an SQ oracle.

222

Differential Privacy and Machine Learning

private learning is immediate via the Laplace mechanism, and preservescomputational efficiency!

11.2

Differentially private online learning

In this section, we consider a slightly different learning problem, known
as the problem of learning from expert advice. This problem will appear
somewhat different from the classification problems that we discussed
in the previous section, but in fact, the simple algorithm presented here
is extremely versatile, and can be used to perform classification among
many other tasks which we will not discuss here.
Imagine that you are betting on horse races, but unfortunately know
nothing about horses! Nevertheless, you have access to the opinions ofsome k experts, who every day make a prediction about which horse isgoing to win. Each day you can choose one of the experts whose advice
you will follow, and each day, following your bet, you learn which horse
actually won. How should you decide which expert to follow each day,and how should you evaluate your performance? The experts are not
perfect (in fact they might not even be any good!), and so it is notreasonable to expect you to make the correct bet all of the time, oreven most of the time if none of the experts do so. However, you might
have a weaker goal: can you bet on horses in such a way so that you
do almost as well as the best expert, in hindsight?
Formally, an online learning algorithm A operates in the following
environment:
1. Each day t = 1, . . . , T :(a) A chooses an expert at ∈ {1, . . . , k}(b) A observes a loss `ti ∈ [0, 1] for each expert i ∈ {1, . . . , k}and experiences loss `tat .
For a sequence of losses `≤T ≡ {`t }Tt=1 , we write:
Li (`≤T ) =T
1X`t
T t=1 i11.2. Differentially private online learning223

to denote the total average loss of expert i over all T rounds, and write
LA (`≤T ) =T
1X`t
T t=1 atto denote the total average loss of the algorithm.
The regret of the algorithm is defined to be the difference between
the loss that it actually incurred, and the loss of the best expert inhindsight:
Regret(A, `≤T ) = LA (`≤T ) − min Li (`≤T ).
i

The goal in online learning is to design algorithms that have the guarantee that for all possible loss sequences `≤T , even adversarialy chosen, theregret is guaranteed to tend to zero as T → ∞. In fact, this is possibleusing the multiplicative weights algorithm (known also by many names,e.g., the Randomized Weighted Majority Algorithm, Hedge, Exponentiated Gradient Descent, and multiplicative weights being among themost popular).
Remark 11.1. We have already seen this algorithm before in Section
4 — this is just the multiplicative weights update rule in another guise!
In fact, it would have been possible to derive all of the results about
the private multiplicative weights mechanism directly from the regretbound we state in Theorem 11.1.
Algorithm 15 The Multiplicative Weights (or Randomized Weighted
Majority (RWM)) algorithm, version 1. It takes as input a stream oflosses `1 , `2 , . . . and outputs a stream of actions a1 , a2 , . . .. It is parameterized by an update parameter η.
RWM(η):For each i ∈ {1, . . . , k}, let wi ← 1.
for t = 1, . . . do
Choose action at = i with probability proportional to wi
Observe `t and set wi ← wi · exp(−η`ti ), for each i ∈ [k]end forIt turns out that this simple algorithm already has a remarkable
regret bound.

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Differential Privacy and Machine Learning

Theorem 11.1. For any adversarially chosen sequence of losses oflength T , `≤T = (`1 , . . . , `T ) the Randomized Weighted Majority algorithm with update parameter η has the guarantee that:
E[Regret(RWM(η), `≤T )] ≤ η +

ln(k)
,
ηT

where k is the number of experts. Choosing η =s

E[Regret(RWM(η), `≤T )] ≤ 2

q(11.1)ln k
T gives:ln k.
TThis remarkable theorem states that even faced with an adversarial sequence of losses, the Randomized Weighted Majority algorithm
can do as well, on average, as the best expert among k in hindsight,minus
q only an additional additive term that goes to zero at a rate ofO( lnTk ). In other words, after at most T ≤ 4 lnα2k rounds, the regretof the randomized weighted majority algorithm is guaranteed to be at
most α! Moreover, this bound is the best possible.
Can we achieve something similar, but under the constraint of differential privacy? Before we can ask this question, we must decide
what is the input database, and at what granularity we would liketo protect privacy? Since the input is the collection of loss vectors`≤T = (`1 , . . . , `T ), it is natural to view `≤T as the database, and toˆ as one that differs in the entire loss
view a neighboring database `≤Tvector in any single timestep: i.e., one in which for some fixed timestept, `ˆi = `i for all i 6= t, but in which `t and `ˆt can differ arbitrarily.
The output of the algorithm is the sequence of actions that it chooses,
a1 , . . . , aT , and it is this that we wish to be output in a differentiallyprivate manner.
Our first observation is that the randomized weighted majority algorithm chooses an action at each day t in a familiar manner! We here
rephrase the algorithm in an equivalent way:
It chooses an action at with probability proportional to:Pjexp(−η t−1
j=1 `i ), which is simply the exponential mechanism with qualPj
ity score q(i, `<T ) = t−1
j=1 `i , and privacy parameter ε = 2η. Note that
because each `ti ∈ [0, 1], the quality function has sensitivity 1. Thus,11.2. Differentially private online learning

225

Algorithm 16 The Multiplicative Weights (or Randomized Weighted
Majority (RWM)) algorithm, rephrased. It takes as input a stream oflosses `1 , `2 , . . . and outputs a stream of actions a1 , a2 , . . .. It is parameterized by an update parameter η.
RWM(η):
for t = 1, . . . do
Choose action at
Pt−1 j`i )exp(−η j=1
Observe `t
end for=i with probability proportional toeach round t, the randomized weighted majority algorithm chooses anaction at in a way that preserves 2η differential privacy, so to achieve
privacy ε it suffices to set η = ε/2.
Moreover, over the course of the run of the algorithm, it will choose
an action T times. If we want the entire run of the algorithm to be(ε, δ)-differentially private for some ε and δ, we can thus simply apply
our composition theorems. Recall that by Theorem 3.20, since there
are T steps in total, if each step of the algorithm is (ε0 , 0)-differentiallypprivate for ε0 = ε/ 8T ln(1/δ), then the entire algorithm will be (ε, δ)differentially private. Thus, the following theorem is immediate by setting η = ε0 /2:
Theorem 11.2. For a sequence of losses of length T , the algorithm
RWM(η) with η = √ εis (ε, δ)-differentially private.
32T ln(1/δ)

Remarkably, we get this theorem without modifying the original
randomized weighted majority algorithm at all, but rather just by setting η appropriately. In some sense, we are getting privacy for free!
We can therefore use Theorem 11.1, the utility theorem for the RWM
algorithm, without modification as well:
Theorem 11.3. For any adversarially chosen sequence of losses oflength T , `≤T = (`1 , . . . , `T ) the Randomized Weighted Majority

226

Differential Privacy and Machine Learningalgorithm with update parameter η = √ε32T ln(1/δ)

has the guarantee

that:
≤T

E[Regret(RWM(η), `ε)] ≤ p+
32T ln(1/δ)
p≤p

32 ln(1/δ) ln k√ε T

128 ln(1/δ) ln k√,ε Twhere k is the number of experts.
Since the per-round loss at each time step t is an independently
chosen random variable (over the choices of at ) with values bounded in[−1, 1], we can also apply a Chernoff bound to get a high probability
guarantee:
Theorem 11.4. For any adversarially chosen sequence of losses oflength T , `≤T = (`1 , . . . , `T ) the Randomized Weighted Majority algoproduces a sequence ofrithm with update parameter η = √ ε32T ln(1/δ)

actions such that with probability at least 1 − β:Regret(RWM(η), `≤T ) ≤p

128 ln(1/δ) ln k
√
+
ε T
p

=O

s

ln k/βT!

ln(1/δ) ln(k/β)√.
ε TThis bound is nearly as good as the best possible bound achievableeven without privacy (i.e., the√ RWM bound) — the regret bound isln(k) ln(1/δ)

larger only by a factor of Ω(). (We note that by using aεdifferent algorithm√ with a more careful analysis, we can remove thisextra factor of ln k). Since we are in fact using the same algorithm,
efficiency is of course preserved as well. Here we have a powerful example in machine learning where privacy is nearly “free.” Notably, just as
with the non-private algorithm, our utility bound only gets better the
longer we run the algorithm, while keeping the privacy guarantee thesame.33

Of course, we have to set the update parameter appropriately, just as we haveto do with the non-private algorithm. This is easy when the number of rounds T is
known ahead of time, but can also be done adaptively when the number of rounds
is not known ahead of time.

11.3. Empirical risk minimization

11.3

227

Empirical risk minimization

In this section, we apply the randomized weighted majority algorithm
discussed in the previous section to a special case of the problem of
empirical risk minimization to learn a linear function. Rather thanassuming an adversarial model, we will assume that examples are drawn
from some known distribution, and we wish to learn a classifier fromsome finite number of samples from this distribution so that our loss
will be low on new samples drawn from the same distribution.
Suppose that we have a distribution D over examples x ∈ [−1, 1]d ,and for each such vector x ∈ [−1, 1]d , and for each vector θ ∈ [0, 1]d withkθk1 = 1, we define the loss of θ on example x to be Loss(θ, x) = hθ, xi.
We wish to find a vector θ∗ to minimize the expected loss over examples
drawn from D:θ∗ = argminθ∈[0,1]d :kθk1 =1

Ex∼D [hθ, xi].

This problem can be used to model the task of finding a low error linear
classifier. Typically our only access to the distribution D is throughsome collection of examples S ⊂ [−1, 1]d drawn i.i.d. from D, which
serves as the input to our learning algorithm. We will here think of thissample S as our private database, and will be interested in how well
we can privately approximate the error of θ∗ as a function of |S| (thesample complexity of the learning algorithm).
Our approach will be to reduce the problem to that of learningwith expert advice, and apply the private version of the randomized
weighted majority algorithm as discussed in the last section:
1. The experts will be the d standard basis vectors {e1 , . . . , ed },where ei = (0, . . . , 0, |{z}1 , 0, . . . , 0).
i

2. Given an example x ∈ [−1, 1]d , we define a loss vector `(x) ∈[−1, 1]d by setting `(x)i = hei , xi for each i ∈ {1, . . . , d}. In otherwords, we simply set `(x)i = xi .
3. At time t, we choose a loss function `t by sampling x ∼ D andsetting `t = `(x).

228

Differential Privacy and Machine Learning

Note that if we have a sample S from D of size |S| = T , then we can run
the RWM algorithm on the sequence of losses as described above for a
total of T rounds. This will produce a sequence of outputs a1 , . . . , aT ,P
and we will define our final classifier to be θT ≡ T1 Ti=1 ai . (Recall
that each ai is a standard basis vector ai ∈ {e1 , . . . , ed }, and so wehave kθT k1 = 1).
We summarize the algorithm below:
Algorithm 17 An algorithm for learning linear functions. It takes as
input a private database of examples S ⊂ [−1, 1]d , S = (x1 , . . . , xT ),and privacy parameters ε and δ.
LinearLearner(S, ε, δ):Let η ← √ ε
32T ln(1/δ)

for t = 1 to T = |S| do
Choose vector at = ei with probability proportional toPt−1 j`i )exp(−η j=1
Let loss vector `t = (he1 , xt i, he2 , xt i, . . . , hed , xt i).
end forP
Output θT = T1 Tt=1 at .
We have already seen that LinearLearner is private, since it is simply an instantiation of the randomized weighted majority algorithmwith the correct update parameter η:
Theorem 11.5. LinearLearner(S, ε, δ) is (ε, δ)-differentially private.
It remains to analyze the classification accuracy of LinearLearner,
which amounts to considering the regret bound of the private RWM
algorithm.
Theorem 11.6. If S consists of T i.i.d. samples x ∼ D, then withprobability at least 1 − β, LinearLearner outputs a vector θT such that:∗T

Ex∼D [hθ , xi] ≤ min
Ex∼D [hθ , xi] + O∗θwhere d is the number of experts.

p!

ln(1/δ) ln(d/β)√,ε T11.3. Empirical risk minimization

229

Proof. By Theorem 11.4, we have the following guarantee with probability at least 1 − β/2:
T
T
1X
1X
hat , xt i ≤ min
ei ,
xt
T t=1
T t=1
i∈{1,...,d}

*

*

=

+

p

+O

T
1X
θ ,
xt
T t=1
∗

min

θ∗ ∈[0,1]d :kθ∗ k1 =1ln(1/δ) ln(d/β)
√
ε T

+

!

!

p

ln(1/δ) ln(d/β)
√
.
ε T

+O

In the first equality, we use the fact that the minimum of a linear function over the simplex is achieved at a vertex of the simplex. Noting thateach xt ∼ D independently and that each hxt , ei i is bounded in [−1, 1],
we can apply Azuma’s inequality twice to bound the two quantities
with probability at least 1 − β/2:
T
T
1X
1X
hat , xt i −Ex∼D hat , xi
T t=1
T t=1

s

T
1X
=
hat , xt i − Ex∼D hθT , xi ≤ O 
T t=1



ln(1/β) 
T

and
T
1X
ei ,
xt
T t=1

*

max

i∈{1,...,d}s+− Ex∼D hei , xi ≤ O ln(d/β) .
THence we also have:
T
1X
xt
θ∗ ,
T t=1

*

max

θ∗ ∈[0,1]d :kθ∗ k1 =1

s+− Ex∼D hθ∗ , xi ≤ O ln d/β .
TCombining these inequalities gives us our final result about the outputof the algorithm θT :T

Ex∼D hθ , xi ≤minθ∗ ∈[0,1]d :kθ∗ k1 =1∗

Ex∼D hθ , xi + O

p!

ln(1/δ) ln(d/β)
√
.
ε T

230

11.4

Differential Privacy and Machine Learning

Bibliographical notes

The PAC model of machine learning was introduced by Valiant in 1984[83], and the SQ model was introduced by Kearns [53]. The randomized
weighted majority algorithm is originally due to Littlestone and Warmuth [57], and has been studied in many forms. See Blum and Mansour[9] or Arora et al. [1] for a survey. The regret bound that we use forthe randomized weighted majority algorithm is given in [1].
Machine learning was one of the first topics studied in differential
privacy, beginning with the work of Blum et al. [7], who showed thatalgorithms that operate in the SQ-learning framework could be converted into privacy preserving algorithms. The sample complexity ofdifferentially private learning was first considered by Kasiviswanathan,Lee, Nissim, Raskhodnikova, and Smith, “What can we Learn Privately?” [52], which characterize the sample complexity of private learning up to polynomial factors. For more refined analysis of the sample
complexity of private learning, see [3, 4, 12, 19].
There is also extensive work on efficient machine learningalgorithms, including the well known frameworks of SVMs and empirical risk minimizers [13, 55, 76]. Spectral learning techniques, including PCA and low rank matrix approximation have also been studied[7, 14, 33, 42, 43, 51].
Private learning from expert advice was first considered by Dwork
et al. [26]. The fact that the randomized weighted majority algorithm isprivacy preserving without modification (when the update parameteris set appropriately) is folklore (following from advanced composition[32]) and has been widely used; for example, in [48]. For a more general
study of private online learning, see [50], and for a more general studyof empirical risk minimization, see [50, 13].

12
Additional Models

So far, we have made some implicit assumptions about the model ofprivate data analysis. For example, we have assumed that there is sometrusted curator who has direct access to the private dataset, and wehave assumed that the adversary only has access to the output of thealgorithm, not to any of its internal state during its execution. But what
if this is not the case? What if we trust no one to look at our data,
even to perform the privacy preserving data analysis? What if somehacker might gain access to the internal state of the private algorithm
while it is running? In this section, we relax some of our previously
held assumptions and consider these questions.
In this section we describe some additional computational models
that have received attention in the literature.
• The local model is a generalization of randomized response (seeSection 2), and is motivated by situations in which individuals do
not trust the curator with their data. While this lack of trust canbe addressed using secure multiparty computation to simulate therole played by the trusted curator, there are also some techniquesthat do not require cryptography.

231

232

Additional Models

The next two models consider streams of events, each of which may be
associated with an individual. For example, an event may be a search
by a particular person on an arbitrary term. In a given event stream,the (potentially many) events associated with a given individual can bearbitrarily interleaved with events associated with other individuals.
• In pan-privacy the curator is trusted, but may be subject to compulsory non-private data release, for example, because of a subpoena, or because the entity holding the information is purchasedby another, possibly less trustworthy, entity. Thus, in pan-privacy
the internal state of the algorithm is also differentially private, as
is the joint distribution of the internal state and the outputs.
• The continual observation model addresses the question of maintaining privacy when the goal is to continually monitor and reportstatistics about events, such as purchases of over-the-counter
medications that might be indicative of an impending epidemic.
Some work addresses pan-privacy under continual observation.

12.1

The local model

So far, we have considered a centralized model of data privacy, in which
there exists a database administrator who has direct access to the private data. What if there is instead no trusted database administrator?
Even if there is a suitable trusted party, there are many reasons not towant private data aggregated by some third party. The very existenceof an aggregate database of private information raises the possibility
that at some future time, it will come into the hands of an untrusted
party, either maliciously (via data theft), or as a natural result of organizational succession. A superior model — from the perspective of theowners of private data — would be a local model, in which agents could(randomly) answer questions in a differentially private manner about
their own data, without ever sharing it with anyone else. In the context of predicate queries, this seems to severely limit the expressivity ofa private mechanism’s interaction with the data: The mechanism can
ask each user whether or not her data satisfies a given predicate, and12.1. The local model233

the user may flip a coin, answering truthfully only with slightly higher
probability than answering falsely. In this model what is possible?
The local privacy model was first introduced in the context of learning. The local privacy model formalizes randomized response: there isno central database of private data. Instead, each individual maintains
possession of their own data element (a database of size 1), and answers
questions about it only in a differentially private manner. Formally, thedatabase x ∈ N|X | is a collection of n elements from some domain X ,and each xi ∈ x is held by an individual.
Definition 12.1 (Local Randomizer). An ε-local randomizer R : X →W is an ε-differentially private algorithm that takes as input a databaseof size n = 1.
In the local privacy model, algorithms may interact with the
database only through a local randomizer oracle:
Definition 12.2 (LR Oracle). An LR oracle LRD (·, ·) takes as input anindex i ∈ [n] and an ε-local randomizer R and outputs a random valuew ∈ W chosen according to the distribution R(xi ), where xi ∈ D is theelement held by the ith individual in the database.
Definition 12.3 ((Local Algorithm)). An algorithm is ε-local if it
accesses the database D via the oracle LRD , with the following restriction: If LRD (i, R1 ), . . . , LRD (i, Rk ) are the algorithm’s invocationsof LRD on index i, where each RJ is an εj -local randomizer, then
ε1 + · · · + εk ≤ ε.
Because differential privacy is composable, it is easy to see that
ε-local algorithms are ε-differentially private.
Observation 12.1. ε-local algorithms are ε-differentially private.
That is to say, an ε-local algorithm interacts with the data using
only a sequence of ε-differentially private algorithms, each of which
computes only on a database of size 1. Because nobody other than its
owner ever touches any piece of private data, the local setting is far
more secure: it does not require a trusted party, and there is no central
party who might be subject to hacking. Because even the algorithm

234

Additional Models

never sees private data, the internal state of the algorithm is always
differentially private as well (i.e., local privacy implies pan privacy,
described in the next section). A natural question is how restrictive
the local privacy model is. In this section, we merely informally discuss
results. The interested reader can follow the bibliographic references atthe end of this section for more information. We note that an alternative
name for the local privacy model is the fully distributed model.
We recall the definition of the statistical query (SQ) model, introduced in Section 11. Roughly speaking, given a database x of size n,
the statistical query model allows an algorithm to access this databaseby making a polynomial (in n) number of noisy linear queries to the
database, where the error in the query answers is some inverse polynomial in n. Formally:
Definition 12.4. A statistical query is some function φ : X × {0, 1} →[0, 1]. A statistical query oracle for a distribution over labeled examτ such that for every statisticalples D with tolerance τ is an oracle OD
query φ:τOD(φ) − E(x,y)∼D [φ(x, y)] ≤ τ
In other words, an SQ oracle takes as input a statistical query φ, andoutputs some value that is guaranteed to be within ±τ of the expectedvalue of φ on examples drawn from D.
Definition 12.5. An algorithm A is said to SQ-learn a class of functions
C if for every α, β > 0 there exists an m = poly(d, 1/α, log(1/β)) such
τ , and withthat A makes at most m queries of tolerance τ = 1/m to OD
probability 1 − β, outputs a hypothesis f ∈ C such that:err(f, D) ≤ minerr(f ∗ , D) + α∗f ∈CMore generally, we can talk about an algorithm (for performing any
computation) as operating in the SQ model if it accesses the data only
through an SQ oracle:
Definition 12.6. An algorithm A is said to operate in the SQ model
if there exists an m such that A makes at most m queries of tolerance
τ , and does not have any other access to the database.
τ = 1/m to OD
A is efficient if m is polynomial in the size of the database, D.

12.1. The local model235

It turns out that up to polynomial factors in the size of the databaseand in the number of queries, any algorithm that can be implemented
in the SQ model can be implemented and analyzed for privacy in thelocal privacy model, and vice versa. We note that there is a distinction
between an algorithm being implemented in the SQ model, and its
privacy analysis being carried out in the local model: almost all of
the algorithms that we have presented in the end access the data using
noisy linear queries, and so can be thought of as acting in the SQ model.
However, their privacy guarantees are analyzed in the centralized modelof data privacy (i.e., because of some “global” part of the analysis, asin the sparse vector algorithm).
In the following summary, we will also recall the definition of PAC
learning, also introduced in Section 11:
Definition 12.7. An algorithm A is said to PAC-learn a class of functions C if for every α, β > 0, there exists an m = poly(d, 1/α, log(1/β))
such that for every distribution D over labeled examples, A takes as
input m labeled examples drawn from D and outputs a hypothesisf ∈ C such that with probability 1 − β:err(f, D) ≤ minerr(f ∗ , D) + α∗
f ∈C

If minf ∗ ∈C err(f ∗ , D) = 0, the learner is said to operate in therealizable setting (i.e., there exists some function in the class which
perfectly labels the data). Otherwise, the learner is said to operate
in the agnostic setting. If A also has run time that is polynomial ind, 1/α, and log(1/β), then the learner is said to be efficient. If there isan algorithm which PAC-learns C, then C is said to be PAC-learnable.
Note that the main distinction between an SQ learning algorithm and a
PAC learning algorithm, is that the PAC learning algorithm gets directaccess to the database of examples, whereas the SQ learning algorithm
only has access to the data through a noisy SQ oracle.
What follows is some of our understanding of the limitations of the
SQ model and problems which separate it from the centralized modelof data privacy.

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1. A single sensitivity-1 query can be answered to error O(1) in thecentralized model of data privacy using the Laplace mechanism,√
but requires error Θ( n) in the local data privacy model.
2. The set of function classes that we can (properly) learn in thelocal privacy model is exactly the set of function classes that wecan properly learn in the SQ model (up to polynomial factors
in the database size and query complexity of the algorithm). In
contrast, the set of things we can (properly or agnostically) learn
in the centralized model corresponds to the set of things we canlearn in the PAC model. SQ learning is strictly weaker, but thisis not a huge handicap, since parity functions are essentially the
only interesting class that is PAC learnable but not SQ learnable.
We remark that we refer explicitly to proper learning here (meaning the setting in which there is some function in the class which
perfectly labels the data). In the PAC model there is no information theoretic difference between proper and agnostic learning,but in the SQ model the difference is large: see the next point.
3. The set of queries that we can release in the local privacy modelare exactly those queries that we can agnostically learn in the SQ
model. In contrast, the set of things we can release in the centralized model corresponds to the set of things we can agnosticallylearn in the PAC model. This is a much bigger handicap — evenconjunctions (i.e., marginals) are not agnostically learnable in the
SQ model. This follows from the information theoretic reduction
from agnostic learning (i.e., distinguishing) to query release that
we saw in Section 5 using the iterative construction mechanism.
We note that if we are only concerned about computationally bounded
adversaries, then in principle distributed agents can use secure multiparty computation to simulate private algorithms in the centralized
setting. While this does not actually give a differential privacy guarantee, the result of such simulations will be indistinguishable from theresult of differentially private computations, from the point of view of
a computationally bounded adversary. However, general secure multiparty computation protocols typically require huge amounts of message passing (and hence sometimes have unreasonably large run times),

12.2. Pan-private streaming model

237

whereas algorithms in the local privacy model tend to be extremely
simple.

12.2

Pan-private streaming model

The goal of a pan-private algorithm is to remain differentially privateeven against an adversary that can, on rare occasions, observe the algorithm’s internal state. Intrusions can occur for many reasons, includinghacking, subpoena, or mission creep, when data collected for one purpose are used for a different purpose (“Think of the children!”). Panprivate streaming algorithms provide protection against all of these.
Note that ordinary streaming algorithms do not necessarily provide
privacy against intrusions, as even a low-memory streaming algorithm
can hold a small number of data items in memory, which would becompletely exposed in an intrusion. On the technical side, intrusions
can be known to the curator (subpoena) or unknown (hacking). These
can have very different effects, as a curator aware of an intrusion cantake protective measures, such as re-randomizing certain variables.

12.2.1

Definitions

We assume a data stream of unbounded length composed of elements
in a universe X . It may be helpful to keep in mind as motivation data
analysis on a query stream, in which queries are accompanied by the
IP address of the issuer. For now, we ignore the query text itself; theuniverse X is the universe of potential IP addresses. Thus, intuitively,
user-level privacy protects the presence or absence of an IP addressin the stream, indpendent of the number of times it arises, should
it actually be present at all. In contrast, event-level privacy merely
protects the privacy of individual accesses. For now, we focus on userlevel privacy.
As usual in differentially private algorithms, the adversary can havearbitrary control of the input stream, and may have arbitrary auxiliary knowledge obtained from other sources. It can also have arbitrarycomputational power.

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Additional Models

We assume the algorithm runs until it receives a special signal,at which point it produces (observable) outputs. The algorithm may
optionally continue to run and produce additional outputs later, again
in response to a special signal. Since outputs are obvservable we do notprovide privacy for the special signals.
A streaming algorithm experiences a sequence of internal states.
and produces a (possibly unbounded) sequence of outputs. Let I denotethe set of possible internal states of the algorithm, and σ the set of
possible output sequences. We assume that the adversary can only
observe internal states and the output sequence; it cannot see thedata in the stream (although it may have auxiliary knowledge aboutsome of these data) and it has no access to the length of the input
sequence.
Definition 12.8 (X -Adjacent Data Streams). We think of data streams
as being of unbounded length; prefixes have finite length. Data streams
S and S 0 are X -adjacent if they differ only in the presence or absenceof all occurrences of a single element u ∈ X . We define X -adjacency
for stream prefixes analogously.
User-Level Pan-Privacy. An algorithm Alg mapping data stream
prefixes to the range I × σ, is pan-private against a single intrusion
if for all sets I0 ⊆ I of internal states and σ 0 ⊆ σ of output sequences,and for all pairs of adjacent data stream prefixes S, S 0
Pr[Alg(S) ∈ (I0 , σ 0 )] ≤ eε Pr[Alg(S 0 ) ∈ (I0 , σ 0 )],where the probability spaces are over the coin flips of the algorithm
Alg.
This definition speaks only of a single intrusion. For multiple intrusions we must consider interleavings of observations of internal statesand outputs.
The relaxation to event-level privacy is obtained by modifying thenotion of adjacency so that, roughly speaking, two streams are eventadjacent if they differ in a single instance of a single element in X ; thatis, one instance of one element is deleted/added. Clearly, event-level
privacy is a much weaker guarantee than user-level privacy.

12.2. Pan-private streaming model

239

Remark 12.1. If we assume the existence of a very small amount ofsecret storage, not visible to the adversary, then many problems forwhich we have been unable to obtain pan-private solutions have (nonpan-) private streaming solutions. However, the amount of secret storage is not so important as its existence, since secret storage is vulnerable
to the social pressures against which pan-privacy seeks to protect thedata (and the curator).
Pan-Private Density Estimation. Quite surprisingly, pan-privacy canbe achieved even for user-level privacy of many common streaming computations. As an example, consider the problem of density estimation:
given a universe X of data elements and a stream σ, the goal is toestimate the fraction of X that acutally appears in the stream. For
example, the universe consists of all teenagers in a given community(represented by IP addresses), and the goal is to understand what fraction visit the Planned Parenthood website.
Standard low-memory streaming solutions for density estimation
involve recording the results of deterministic computations of at least
some input items, an approach that is inherently not pan-private.
Here is a simple, albeit high-memory, solution inspired by randomized response. The algorithm maintains a bit ba for each IP address a(which may appear any number of times in the stream), initialized uniformly at random. The stream is processed one element at a time. On
input a the algorithm flips a bit biased to 1; that is, the biased bit
will take value 0 with probability 1/2 − ε, and value 1 with probability 1/2 + ε. The algorithm follows this procedure independent of thenumber of times IP address a appears in the data stream. This algorithm is (ε, 0)-differentially private. As with randomized response, we
can estimate the fraction of “real” 1’s by z = 2(y − |X |/2)/|X |, where yis the actual number of 1’s in the table after the stream is processed.
To ensure pan-privacy, the algorithm publishes a noisy version of z. Aspwith randomized response, the error will be on the order of 1/ |X |,yielding meaningful results when the density is high.
Other problems enjoying user-level pan-private algorithms include:• Estimating, for any t, the fraction of elements appearing exactly
t times;

240

Additional Models• Estimating the t-cropped mean: roughly, the average, over all elements, of the minimum of t and the number of occurrences of theelement in the data stream;• Estimating the fraction of k-heavy hitters (elements of X thatappear at least k times in the data stream).

Variants of these problems can also be defined for fully dynamic data, inwhich counts can be decremented as well as incremented. For example,
density estimation (what fraction appeared in the stream?) becomes“How many (or what fraction) of elements have a (net) count equal tozero?” These, too, can be solved with user-level pan-privacy, using differentially private variations of sketching techniques from the streaming
literature.

12.3

Continual observation

Many applications of data analysis involve repeated computations,either because the entire goal is one of monitoring of, for example, traffic conditions, search trends, or incidence of influenza. In such applications the system is required to continually produce outputs. We therefore need techniques for achieving differential privacy under continual
observation.
As usual, differential privacy will require having essentially the same
distribution on outputs for each pair of adjacent databases, but how
should we define adjacency in this setting? Let us consider two example
scenarios.
Suppose the goal is to monitor public health by analyzing statistics from an H1N1 self-assessment Web site.1 Individuals can interact with the site to learn whether symptoms they are experiencing
may be indicative of the H1N1 flu. The user fills in some demographic
data (age, zipcode, sex), and responds to queries about his symptoms(fever over 100.4◦ F?, sore throat?, duration of symptoms?). We would
expect a given individual to interact very few times with the H1N1
self-assessment site (say, if we restrict our attention to a six-month1

https://h1n1.cloudapp.net provided such a service during the winter of 2010;user-supplied data were stored for analysis with the user’s consent.

12.3. Continual observation

241

period). For simplicity, let us say this is just once. In such a setting,it is sufficient to ensure event-level privacy, in which the privacy goal
is to hide the presence or absence of a single event (interaction of one
user with the self-assessment site).
Suppose again that the goal is to monitor public health, this timeby analyzing search terms submitted to a medical search engine. Hereit may no longer be safe to assume an individual has few interactions
with the Web site, even if we restrict attention to a relatively shortperiod of time. In this case we would want user-level privacy, ensuringthat the entire set of a user’s search terms is protected simultaneously.
We think of continual observation algorithms as taking steps at
discrete time intervals; at each step the algorithm receives an input,
computes, and produces output. We model the data as arriving in a
stream, at most one data element in each time interval. To capture thefact that, in real life, there are periods of time in which nothing happens, null events are modeled by a special symbol in the data stream.
Thus, the intuitive notion of “t time periods” corresponds to processing
a sequence of t elements in the stream.
For example, the motivation behind the counter primitive below is
to count the number of times that something has occurred since thealgorithm was started (the counter is very general; we don’t specify
a priori what it is counting). This is modeled by an input stream over{0, 1}. Here, “0” means “nothing happened,” “1” means the event ofinterest occurred, and for t = 1, 2, . . . , T the algorithm outputs anapproximation to the number of 1s seen in the length t prefix of thestream.
There are three natural options:
1. Use randomized response for each time period and add this randomized value to the counter;
2. Add noise distributed according to Lap(1/ε) to the true value foreach time step and add this perturbed value to the counter;
3. Compute the true count at each time step, add noise distributed
according to Lap(T /ε) to the count, and release this noisy count.
√
All of these options result in noise on the order of at least Ω( T /ε).
The hope is to do much better by exploiting structure of the query set.

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Additional Models

Let X be the universe of possible input symbols. Let S and S 0 be
stream prefixes (i.e., finite streams) of symbols drawn from X . Then
Adj(S, S 0 ) (“S is adjacent to S 0 ”) if and only if there exist a, b ∈ X
so that if we change some of the instances of a in S to instances of b,then we get S 0 . More formally, Adj(S, S 0 ) iff ∃a, b ∈ X and ∃R ⊆ [|S|],such that S|R:a→b = S 0 . Here, R is a set of indices in the stream prefix
S, and S|R:a→b is the result of replacing all the occurrences of a atthese indices with b. Note that adjacent prefixes are always of the samelength.
To capture event-level privacy, we restrict the definition of adjacency to the case |R| ≤ 1. To capture user-level privacy we do notconstrain the size of R in the definition of adjacency.
As noted above, one option is to publish a noisy count at each time
step; the count published at time t reflects the approximate numberof 1s in the length t prefix of the stream. The privacy challenge isthat early items in the stream are subject to nearly T statistics, sofor (ε, 0)-differential privacy we would be adding noise scaled to T /ε,which is unacceptable. In addition, since the 1s are the “interesting”
elements of the stream, we would like that the distortion be scaled to
the number of 1s seen in the stream, rather than to the length of thestream. This rules out applying randomized response to each item inthe stream independently.
The algorithm below follows a classical approach for converting
static algorithms to dynamic algorithms.
Assume T is a power of 2. The intervals are the natural ones corresponding to the labels on a complete binary tree with T leaves,
where the leaves are labeled, from left to right, with the intervals[0, 0], [1, 1], . . . , [T − 1, T − 1] and each parent is labeled with the interval that is the union of the intervals labeling its children. The idea is
to compute and release a noisy count for each label [s, t]; that is, thereleased value corresponding to the label [s, t] is a noisy count of thenumber of 1s in positions s, s + 1, . . . , t of the input stream. To learn
the approximate cumulative count at time t ∈ [0, T − 1] the analyst
uses the binary representation of t to determine a set of at most log2 T12.3. Continual observation

243

Figure 12.1: Event-level private counter algorithm (not pan-private).

disjoint intervals whose union is [0, t], and computes the sum of thecorresponding released noisy counts.2 See Figure 12.1.
Each stream position t ∈ [0, T − 1] appears in at most 1 + log2 Tintervals (because the height of the tree is log2 T ), and so each element in the stream affects at most 1 + log2 T released noisy counts.
Thus, adding noise to each interval count distributed according toLap((1 + log2 T )/ε) ensures (ε, 0)-differential privacy. As for accuracy,
since the binary representation of any index t ∈ [0, T − 1] yields a disjoint set of at most log2 T intervals whose union is [0, t] we can apply
Lemma 12.2 below to conclude that the expected error is tightly concentrated around (log2 T )3/2 . The maximum expected error, over alltimes t, is on the order of (log2 T )5/3 .
Lemma 12.2. Let Let Y1 , . . . , Yk be independent variables with distripPP
2bution Lap(bi ).√ Let Y = i Yi and bmax = maxi bi . Let ν ≥i (bi ) ,22ν
and 0 < λ < 2bmax. Thenλ2
Pr[Y > λ] ≤ exp − 2
8ν
2

!

.

This algorithm can be optimized slightly (for example, we never use the countcorresponding to the root, eliminating one level from the tree), and it can be modified
to handle the case in which T is not a power of 2 and, more interestingly, when T
is not known a priori.

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Additional Models

Proof. The moment generating function of Yi is E[exp(hYi )] = 1/(1 −h2 b2i ), where |h| < 1/bi . Using the inequality (1 − x)−1 ≤ 1 + 2x ≤2 2
exp(2x) for 0 ≤ x < 1/2, we have E[exp(hY√ i )] ≤ exp(2h bi ), if|h| < 1/2bi . We now calculate, for 0 < h < 1/ 2bmax :Pr[Y > λ] = Pr[exp(hY ) > exp(hλ)]≤ exp(−hλ)E[exp(hY )]= exp(−hλ)

YE[exp(hYi )]i≤ exp(−hλ + 2h2 ν 2 ).
√2

2ν
By assumption, 0 < λ < 2bmax. We complete the proof by setting√2
h = λ/4ν < 1/ 2bmax .

Corollary 12.3. Let Y,qν, {bi }i , bmax be as in Lemma 12.2. For δ ∈(0, 1) and ν > max{p
ν 8 ln(2/δ)] ≤ δ.

p
P 2
i bi , bmax ln(2/δ)}, we have that Pr[|Y | >In√ our case, all the bi ’s are the same (e.g., b = (log2 T )/ε). Taking
ν = kb we have the following corollary:√√√
Corollary 12.4. For all λ < α( kb) < 2 2kb = 2 2kν,2

Pr[Y > λ] ≤ e−α /8 .
Note that we have taken the unusual step of adding noise to thecount before counting, rather than after. In terms of the outputs it
makes no difference (addition is commutative). However, it has an interesting effect on the algorithm’s internal states: they are differentiallyprivate! That is, suppose the intrusion occurs at time t, and consider
any i ∈ [0, t]. Since there are at most log2 T intervals containing step i(in the algorithm we abolished the interval corresponding to the root),
xi affects at most log2 T of the noisy counts, and so xi is protectedagainst the intrusion for exactly the same reason that it is protected in
the algorithm’s outputs. Nevertheless, the algorithm in Figure 12.1 is
not pan-private even against a single intrusion. This is because, while
its internal state and its outputs are each independently differentiallyprivate, the joint distribution does not ensure ε-differential privacy. To

12.3. Continual observation

245

see why this is so, consider an intruder that sees the internal state attime t and knows the entire data stream except xt+1 , and let I = [a, b]
be an interval containing both t and t + 1. Since the adversary knows
x[0,t] , it can subtract from cI the contribution from the stream occurring up through time t (that is, it subtracts off from the observed cI attime t the values xa , xa+1 , . . . , xt , all of which it knows). From this theintruder learns the value of the Laplace draw to which cI was initialized. When cI is published at the end of step b, the adversary subtracts
from the published value this initial draw, together with the contributions of all elements in x[a,b] except xt+1 , which it does not know. Whatremains is the unknown xt+1 .
12.3.1Pan-private counting

Although the algorithm in Figure 12.1 is easily modified to ensure
event-level pan-privacy against a single intrusion, we give a different
algorithm here in order to introduce a powerful bijection techniquewhich has proved useful in other applications. This algorithm maintains in its internal state a single noisy counter, or accumulator, as
well as noise values for each interval. The output at any given time
period t is the sum of the accumulator and the noise values for theintervals containing t. When an interval I ends, its associated noise
value, ηI , is erased from memory.
Theorem 12.5. The counter algorithm of Figure 12.2, when run withparameters T, ε, and suffering at most one intrusion, yields an (ε, 0)pan-private counter that, with probability at least 1 − β has maximum
error, over its T outputs, of O(log(1/β) · log2.5 T /ε). We note also thatin every round individually (rather than in all rounds simultaneously),with all but β probability, the error has magnitude at most O(log(1/β)·log1.5 T /ε).
Proof. The proof of accuracy is the same as that for the algorithm in
Figure 12.1, relying on Corollary 12.4. We focus here on the proof of
pan-privacy.
During an intrusion between atomic steps t∗ and t∗ + 1, that is,immediately following the processing of element t∗ in the input stream

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Additional Models

Figure 12.2: Event-level pan-private counter algorithm.

(recall that we begin numbering the elements with 0), the view of theadversary consists of (1) the noisy cumulative count (in the variable“count”), (2) the interval noise values ηS in memory when the intrusion
occurs, and (3) the complete sequence of all of the algorithm’s outputs
in rounds 0, 1, . . . , t. Consider adjacent databases x and x0 , which differ
in time t, say, without loss of generality, xt = 1 and x0t = 0, and an
intrusion immediately following time period t∗ ≥ t (we will discuss thecase t∗ < t below). We will describe a bijection between the vector ofnoise values used in executions on x and executions on x0 , such that
corresponding noise values induce identical adversary views on x and
x0 , and the probabilities of adjacent noise values differ only by an eεmultiplicative factor. This implies ε-differential pan-privacy.
By assumption, the true count just after the time period t∗ ≥ t
is larger when the input is x than it is when the input is x0 . Fix anarbitrary execution Ex when the input stream is x. This amounts to
fixing the randomness of the algorithm, which in turn fixes the noise
values generated. We will describe the corresponding execution Ex0 by
describing how its noise values differ from those in Ex .
The program variable Counter was initialized with Laplace noise.
By increasing this noise by 1 in Ex0 the value of Counter just after stept∗ is identical in Ex0 and Ex . The noise variables in memory immediately following period t∗ are independent of the input; these will be12.3. Continual observation

247

unchanged in Ex0 . We will make the sequence of outputs in Ex0 identical to those in Ex by changing a collection of log T interval noise values
ηS that are not in memory when the adversary intrudes, so that thesum of all noise values in all rounds up through t − 1 is unchanged,
but the sum from round t on is larger by 1 for database x0 than for x.
Since we increased the initialization noise for Counter, we now need todecrease the sum of interval noise values for periods 0, . . . , t − 1 by 1,
and leave unchanged the sum of interval noise values from period t.
To do this, we find a collection of disjoint intervals whose union is{0, . . . , t − 1}. There is always such a collection, and it is always of size
at most log T . We can construct it iteratively by, for i decreasing fromblog(t − 1)c to 0, choosing the interval of size 2i that is contained in{0, . . . , t − 1} and is not contained in a previously chosen interval (ifsuch an interval exists). Given this set of disjoint intervals, we noticealso that they all end by time t − 1 < t ≤ t∗ , and so their noises are
not in memory when the adversary intrudes (just following period t∗ ).
In total (taking into account also changing the initial noise value forCounter), the complete view seen by the adversary is identical and theprobabilities of the (collection of) noise values used for x and x0 differ
by at most an eε multiplicative factor.
Note that we assumed t∗ ≥ t. If t∗ < t then the initial noise added
to Counter in Ex0 will be the same as in Ex , and we need to add 1 tothe sum of interval noises in every time period from t through T (thesum of interval noises before time t remains unchanged). This is done
as above, by finding a disjoint collection of at most log T intervals thatexactly covers {t, . . . , T − 1}. The noise values for these intervals are
not yet in memory when the intrusion occurs in time t∗ < t, and theproof follows similarly.
12.3.2A logarithmic (in T ) lower boundGiven the upper bound of Theorem 12.5, where the error depends only
poly-logarithmically on T , it is natural to ask whether any dependence
is inherent. In this section we show that a logarithmic dependence on
T is indeed inherent.

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Theorem 12.6. Any differentially private event-level algorithm forcounting over T rounds must have error Ω(log T ) (even with ε = 1).
Proof. Let ε = 1. Suppose for the sake of contradiction that there exists
a differentially private event-level counter for streams of length T thatguarantees that with probability at least 2/3, its count at all time
periods is accurate up to a maximum error of (log2 T )/4. Let k =(log2 T )/4. We construct a set S of T /k inputs as follows. Divide theT time periods into T /k consecutive phases, each of length k (except,
possibly, the last one). For i = 1, . . . , T /k, the i-th input xi ∈ S has
0 input bits everywhere except during the ith phase. That is, xi =0k·i ◦ 1k ◦ 0k·((T /k)−(i+1)) .
Fo 1 ≤ i ≤ T /k, we say an output matches i if just before theith phase the output is less than k/2 and at the end of the ith phasethe output is at least k/2. By accuracy, on input xi the output shouldmatch i with probability at least 2/3. By ε differential privacy, thismeans that for every i, j ∈ [T /k] such that i 6= j, the output on input
xi should match j with probability at leaste−2ε·k = e−ε log(T= e− log(T

1/2 )

1/2 )

√
= 1/ T .

This is a contradiction, because the events that the output matches j
are disjoint for different j, and yet the sum of their probabilities on
input xi exceeds 1.

12.4

Average case error for query release

In Sections 4 and 5, we considered various mechanisms for solving theprivate query release problem, where we were interested in worst caseerror. That is, given a class of queries Q, of size |Q| = k, we wished
to recover a vector of answers â ∈ Rk such that for each query fi ∈ Q,
|fi (x) − âi | ≤ α for some worst-case error rate α. In other words, if we
let a ∈ Rk denote the vector of true answers, with ai ≡ fi (x), then we
require a bound of the form: ka − âk∞ ≤ α. In this section, we consider
a weakened utility guarantee, on the `2 (rather than `∞ ) error: a boundof the form ka − âk2 ≤ α. A bound of this form does not guarantee

12.4. Average case error for query release249

that we have low error for every query, but it does guarantee that on
average, we have small error.
Although this sort of bound is weaker than worst-case error, themechanism is particularly simple, and it makes use of an elegant
geometric view of the query release problem that we have not seen
until now.
Recall that we can view the database x as a vector x ∈ N|X | withkxk1 = n. We can similarly also view the queries fi ∈ Q as vectors
fi ∈ N|X | , such that fi (x) = hfi , xi. It will therefore be helpful to view
our class of queries Q as a matrix A ∈ Rk×|X | , with the ith row of A
being the vector fi . We can then see that our answer vector a ∈ Rk is,
in matrix notation:
A · x = a.
Let’s consider the domain and range of A when viewed as a linear
map. Write B1 = {x ∈ R|X | : kxk1 = 1} denote the unit `1 ball in|X | dimensional space. Observe that x ∈ nB1 , since kxk1 = n. We willrefer to nB1 as “Database Space.” Write K = AB1 . Note similarly thatfor all x ∈ nB1 , a = A · x ∈ nK. We will refer to nK as “answer
space.” We make a couple of observations about K: Note that because
B1 is centrally symmetric, so is K — that is, K = −K. Note also thatK ⊂ Rk is a convex polytope with vertices ±A1 , . . . , ±A|X | equal tothe columns of A, together with their negations.
The following algorithm is extremely simple: it simply answers every
query independently with the Laplace mechanism, and then projects
back into answer space. In other words, it adds independent Laplacenoise to every query, which as we√ have seen, by itself leads to distortion
that is linear in k (or at least k, if we relax to (ε, δ)-differential privacy). However, the resulting vector ã of answers is likely not consistent
with any database y ∈ nB1 in database space. Therefore, rather thanreturning ã, it instead returns some consistent answer vector â ∈ nK
that is as close to ã as possible. As we will see, this projection step
improves the accuracy of the mechanism, while having no effect on
privacy (since it is just post-processing!)
We first observe that Project is differentially private.
Theorem 12.7. For any A ∈ [0, 1]k×|X | , Project(x, A, ε) preserves(ε, δ)-differential privacy.

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Additional Models

Algorithm 18 The K-Projected Laplace Mechanism. It takes as input
a matrix A ∈ [0, 1]k×|X | , a database x ∈ nB1 , and a privacy parameters
ε and δ.
Project(x, A, ε, δ):Let a = A · xp
For each i ∈ [k], sample νi ∼ Lap( 8k ln(1/δ)/ε), and let ã = a + ν.
Output â = arg minâ∈nK kâ − ãk22 .
Proof. We simply note that ã is the output of the Laplace mechanism
on k sensitivity 1 queries, which is (ε, δ)-differentially private by Theorems 3.6 and 3.20 . Finally, since â is derived from ã without any further
access to the private data, the release of â is differentially private by the
post-processing guarantee of differential privacy, Proposition 2.1.
Theorem 12.8. For any class of linear queries A and database x, leta = A · x denote the true answer vector. Let â denote the output of themechanism Project: â = Project(x, A, ε). With probability at least
1 − β:
p
kn 192 ln(1/δ) ln(2|X |/β)2.
ka − âk2 ≤εTo prove this theorem, we will introduce a couple of simple concepts
from convex geometry. For a convex body K ⊂ Rk , its polar body is K ◦defined to be K ◦ = {y ∈ Rk : hy, xi ≤ 1 for all x ∈ K}. The Minkowski
Norm defined by a convex body K is
kxkK ≡ min{r ∈ R such that x ∈ rK}.
The dual norm of kxkK is the Minkowski norm induced by the polar
body of K, i.e., kxkK ◦ . This norm also has the following form:
kxkK ◦ = maxhx, yi.
y∈K

The key fact we will use is Holder’s Inequality, which is satisfied by all
centrally symmetric convex bodies K:|hx, yi| ≤ kxkK kykK ◦ .

12.4. Average case error for query release

251

Proof of Theorem 12.8. The proof will proceed in two steps. First we
will show that: ka − âk22 ≤ 2hâ − a, ã − ai, and then we will use Holder’sinequality to bound this second quantity.
Lemma 12.9.
ka − âk22 ≤ 2hâ − a, ã − aiProof. We calculate:kâ − ak22 = hâ − a, â − ai= hâ − a, ã − ai + hâ − a, â − ãi≤ 2hâ − a, ã − ai.
The inequality follows from calculating:hâ − a, ã − ai = kã − ak22 + hâ − ã, ã − ai≥ kâ − ãk22 + hâ − ã, ã − ai= hâ − ã, â − ai,
Where the final inequality follows because by choice of â, for all a0 ∈nK: kã − âk22 ≤ kã − a0 k22 .
We can now complete the proof. Recall that by definition, ã−a = ν,the vector of i.i.d. Laplace noise added by the Laplace mechanism. By
Lemma 12.9 and Holder’s inequality, we have:ka − âk22 ≤ 2hâ − a, νi≤ 2kâ − akK kνkK ◦ .
We bound these two terms separately. Since by definition â, a ∈ nK,
we have max(kâkK , kakK ) ≤ n, and so by the triangle inequality, kâ −akK ≤ 2n.
Next, observe that since kνkK ◦ = maxy∈K hy, νi, and since the maximum of a linear function taken over a polytope is attained at a vertex,
we have: kνkK ◦ = maxi∈[|X |] |hAi , νi|.
Because each Ai ∈ Rk is such that kAi k∞ ≤ 1, and recalling that forany scalar q, if Z ∼ Lap(b), then qZ ∼ Lap(qb), we can apply Lemma by

252

Additional Models

Lemma 12.2 to bound the weighted sums of Laplace random variables
hAi , νi. Doing so, we have that with probability at least 1 − β:p8k ln(1/δ) ln(|X |/β)max |hA , νi| ≤.

i∈[|X |]
i

Combining all of the above bounds, we get that with probability
1 − β:
16nk
ka − âk22 ≤pln(1/δ) ln(|X |/β).
Let’s interpret this bound. Observe that ka − âk22 = ki=1 (ai − âi )2 ,and so this is a bound on the sum of squared errors over all queries.
Hence, the average per-query squared error of this mechanism is only:Pk
1X
16n ln(1/δ) ln(|X |/β)(ai − âi )2 ≤
.
k i=1


p

In contrast, the private multiplicative weights mechanism guaran√
tees that maxi∈[k] |ai − âi | ≤ Õ( n log |X |1/4 /ε1/2 ), and so matches
the average squared error guarantee of the projected Laplace mechap
nism, with a bound of: Õ(n log |X |/ε). However, the multiplicative
weights mechanism (and especially its privacy analysis) its much more
complex than the Projected Laplace mechanism! In particular, the private part of the K-Projected Laplace mechanism is simply the Laplacemechanism itself, and requires no coordination between queries. Interestingly — and, it turns out, necessarily — coordination occurs in the
projection phase. Since projection is in post-precessing, it incurs nofurther privacy loss; indeed, it can be carrie out (online, if necessary)by the data analyst himself.

12.5

Bibliographical notes

The local model of data privacy has its roots in randomized response, as
first proposed by Warner in 1965 [84]. The local model was formalized
by Kasiviswanathan et al. [52] in the context of learning, who provedthat private learning in the local modal is equivalent to non-private

12.5. Bibliographical notes

253

learning in the statistical query (SQ) model. The set of queries which
can be released in the local model was shown to be exactly equal to
the set of queries that can be agnostically learned in the SQ model by
Gupta et al. [38].
Pan-Privacy was introduced by Dwork et al. [27], and further
explored by Mir et al. [62]. The pan-private density estimation, as well
as a low-memory variant using hashing, appear in [27].
Privacy under continual observation was introduced by Dwork
et al. [26]; our algorithm for counting under continual observation isfrom that paper, as is the lower bound on error. Similar algorithms were
given by Chan et al. [11]. The proof of concentration of measure inequality for the sums of Laplace random variables given in Lemma 12.2 isfrom [11].
The Projected Laplace mechanism for achieving low average error
was given by Nikolov et al.[66], who also give instance optimal algorithms for the (average error) query release problem for any class ofqueries. This work extends a line of work on the connections between
differential privacy and geometry started by Hardt and Talwar [45],and extended by Bhaskara et al. [5] and Dwork et al. [30].
Dwork, Naor, and Vadhan proved an exponential gap between thenumber of queries that can be answered (with non-trivial error) bystateless and stateful differentially private mechanisms [29]. The lesson
learned — that coordination is essential for accurately and privately
answering very large numbers of queries — seems to rule out the independent noise addition in the Projected Laplace mechanism. The statefulness of that algorithm appears in the projection step, resolving theparadox.

13
Reflections

13.1

Toward practicing privacy

Differential Privacy was designed with internet-scale data sets in mind.
Reconstruction attacks along the lines of those in Section 8 can be
carried out by a polynomial time bounded adversary asking only O(n)queries on databases of size n. When n is on the order of hundreds ofmillions, and each query requires a linear amount of computation, suchan attack is unrealistic, even thought the queries can be parallelized.
This observation led to the earliest steps toward differential privacy: If
the adversary is restricted to a sublinear number of counting queries,√
then o( n) noise per query — less than the sampling error! — is sufficient for preserving privacy (Corollary 3.21).
To what extent can differential privacy be brought to bear on
smaller data sets, or even targeted attacks that isolate a small subset of a much larger database, without destroying statistical utility?
First, an analysis may require a number of queries that begins to looksomething like the size of this smaller set. Second, letting n now denotethe size of the smaller set or small database, and letting
k be the num√
ber of queries, fractional errors on the order of k/n are harder topignore when n is small. Third, the ln(1/δ)/ε factor in the advanced254

13.1. Toward practicing privacy

255

composition theorem becomes significant. Keeping in mind the recon√
struction attacks when noise is o( n), there appears to be little room
to maneuver for arbitrary sets of k ≈ n low-sensitivity queries.
There are several promising lines of research for addressing theseconcerns.
The Query Errors Don’t Tell the Whole Story. As an example of thisphenomenon, consider the problem of linear regression. The input isa collection of labeled data points of the form (x, y), where x ∈ Rd
and y ∈ R, for arbitrary dimension d. The goal is to find θ ∈ Rd that
“predicts” y “as well as possible,” given x, under the assumption thatthe relationship is linear. If the goal is simply to “explain” the given
data set, differential privacy may well introduce unacceptable error.
Certainly the specific algorithm that simply computes
argminθ |nXθ · xi − yi |2

i=1

and adds appropriately scaled Laplace noise independently to eachcoordinate of θ may produce a θ̃ that differs substantially from θ. But if
the goal is to learn a predictor that will do well for future, unseen inputs(x, y) then a slightly different computation is used to avoid overfitting,and the (possibly large) difference between the private and non-private
coefficient vectors does not translate into a gap in classification error!
A similar phenomenon has been observed in model fitting.
Less Can Be More. Many analyses ask for more than they actuallyuse. Exploitation of this principle is at the heart of Report Noisy Max,
where for the accuracy “price” of one measurement we learn one of
the largest of many measurements. By asking for “less” (that is, notrequiring that all noisy measurements be released, but rather only asking for the largest one), we obtain “more” (better accuracy). A familiar
principle in privacy is to minimize collection and reporting. Here we
see this play out in the realm of what must be revealed, rather thanwhat must be used in the computation.
Quit When You are NOT Ahead. This is the philosophy behind
Propose-Test-Release, in which we test in a privacy-preserving way

256

Reflections

that small noise is sufficient for a particular intended computation on
the given data set.
Algorithms with Data-Dependent Accuracy Bounds. This can beviewed as a generalization of Quit When You are Not Ahead. Algorithms with data-dependent accuracy bounds can deliver excellent
results on “good” data sets, as in Propose-Test-Release, and the accuracy can degrade gradually as the “goodness” decreases, an improvement over Propose-Test-Release.
Exploit “Nice” Query Sets. When (potentially large) sets of linear
queries are presented as a batch it is possible, by analyzing the geometryof the query matrix to obtain higher quality answers than would beobtained were the queries answered independently1 .
Further Relaxation of Differential Privacy We have seen that (, δ)differential privacy is a meaningful relaxation of differential privacy
that can provide substantially improved accuracy bounds. Moreover,such a relaxation can be essential to these improvements. For example,
Propose-Test-Release algorithms can only offer (ε, δ)-differential privacy for δ > 0. What about other, but still meaningful, relaxations ofdifferential privacy? Concentrated Differential Privacy is such a relaxation that is incomparable to (ε, δ)-differential privacy and that permits better accuracy. Roughly speaking, it ensures that large privacy
loss happens with very small probability; for example, for all k theprobability of privacy loss kε falls exponentially in k 2 . In contrast,(ε, δ)-differential privacy is consistent with having infinite privacy loss
with probability δ; on the other hand, privacy lost 2ε can happen inconcentrated differential privacy with constant probability, while in(ε, δ)-differential privacy it will only occur with probability boundedby δ, which we typically take to be cryptographically small.
Why might we feel comfortable with this relaxation? The answer
lies in behavior under composition. As an individual’s data participate
More accurately, the analysis is of the object K = AB1k , where A is the query
matrix and B1k is the k-dimensional L1 ball; note that K is the feasible region inanswer space when the database has one element.
1

13.1. Toward practicing privacy

257

in many databases and many different computations, perhaps the real
worry is the combined threat of multiple exposures. This is captured byprivacy under composition. Concentrated differential privacy permits
better accuracy while yielding the same behavior under composition as(ε, δ) (and (ε, 0)) differential privacy.
Differential privacy also faces a number of cultural challenges. Oneof the most significant is non-algorithmic thinking. Differential privacy
is a property of an algorithm. However, many people who work withdata describe their interactions with the data in fundamentally nonalgorithmic terms, such as, “First, I look at the data.” Similarly, data
cleaning is often described in non-algorithmic terms. If data are reasonably plentiful, and the analysts are energetic, then the “Raw Data”
application of the Subsample and Aggregate methodology described in
Example 7.3 suggests a path toward enabling non-algorithmic, interactions by trusted analysts who will follow directions. In general, it
seems plausible that on high-dimensional and on internet-scale data
sets non-algorithmic interactions will be the exception.
What about ε? In Example 3.7 we applied Theorem 3.20 to conclude that to bound the cumulative lifetime privacy loss at ε = 1 withprobability 1 − e−32 , over participation in 10, 000 databases, it is sufficient that each database be (1/801, 0)-differentially private. Whilek = 10,√ 000 may be an overestimate, the dependence on k is fairly
weak ( k), and in the worst case these bounds are tight, ruling out amore relaxed bound than ε0 = 1/801 for each database over the lifetimeof the database. This is simply too strict a requirement in practice.
Perhaps we can ask a different question: Fix ε, say, ε = 1 orε = 1/10; now ask: How can multiple ε’s be apportioned? Permitting
ε privacy loss per query is too weak, and ε loss over the lifetime of thedatabase is too strong. Something in between, say, ε per study or ε
per researcher, may make sense, although this raises the questions of
who is a “researcher” and what constitutes a “study.” This affords substantially more protection against accidental and intentional privacy
compromise than do current practices, from enclaves to confidentiality
contracts.
A different proposal is less prescriptive. This proposal draws fromsecond-generation regulatory approaches to reducing environmental

258

Reflections

degradation, in particular pollution release registries such as the Toxic
Release Inventory that have been found to encourage better practices
through transparency. Perhaps a similar effect could arise with private
data analysis: an Epsilon Registry describing data uses, granularity ofprivacy protection, a “burn rate” of privacy loss per unit time, and acap on total privacy loss permitted before data are retired, when accompanied with a financial penalty for infinite (or very large) loss, can leadto innovation and competition, deploying the talents and resources ofa larger set of researchers and privacy professionals in the search fordifferentially private algorithms.

13.2

The differential privacy lens

An online etymological dictionary describes the original 18th century
meaning of the term of the word “statistics” as “science dealing withdata about the condition of a state or community.” This resonates withdifferential privacy in the breach: if the presence or absence of the dataof a small number of individuals changes the outcome of an analysis
then in some sense the outcome is “about” these few individuals, andis not describing the condition of the community as a whole. Put differently, stability to small perturbations in the data is both the hallmarkof differential privacy and the essence of a common conception of theterm “statistical.” Differential privacy is enabled by stability (Section 7)
and ensures stability (by definition). In some sense it forces all queries
to be statistical in nature. As stability is also increasingly understood tobe a key necessary and sufficient condition for learnability, we observe atantalizing moral equivalence between learnability, differential privacy,
and stability.
With this in mind, it is not surprising that differential privacy is alsoa means to ends other than privacy, and indeed we saw this with gametheory in Section 10. The power of differential privacy comes from its
amenability to composition. Just as composition allows us to build complex differentially private algorithms from smaller differentially privatebuilding blocks, it provides a programming language for constructing
stable algorithms for complex analytical tasks. Consider, for example,
the problem of eliciting a set of bidder values, and using them to price13.2. The differential privacy lens259

a collection of goods that are for sale. Informally, Walrasian equilibrium prices are prices such that every individual can simultaneously
purchase their favorite bundle of goods given the prices, while ensuringthat demand exactly equals the supply of each good. It would seemat first blush, then, that simply computing these prices, and assigningeach person their favorite bundle of goods given the prices would yielda mechanism in which agents were incentivized to tell the truth about
their valuation function — since how could any agent do better thanreceiving their favorite bundle of goods? However, this argument fails —because in a Walrasian equilibrium, agents receive their favorite bundleof goods given the prices, but the prices are computed as a functionof the reported valuations, so an industrious but dishonest agent could
potentially gain by manipulating the computed prices. However, thisproblem is solved (and an approximately truthful mechanism results)
if the equilibrium prices are computed using a differentially private
algorithm — precisely because individual agents have almost no effecton the distribution of prices computed. Note that this application ismade possible by the use of the tools of differential privacy, but is completely orthogonal to privacy concerns. More generally, this connection
is more fundamental: computing equilibria of various sorts using algorithms that have the stability property guaranteed by differential privacy leads to approximately truthful mechanisms implementing theseequilibrium outcomes.
Differential privacy also helps in ensuring generalizability in adaptive data analysis. Adaptivity means that the questions asked andhypotheses tested depend on outcomes of earlier questions. Generalizability means that the outcome of a computation or a test on thedata set is close to the ground truth of the distribution from which thedata are sampled. It is known that the naive paradigm of answering
queries with the exact empirical values on a fixed data set fails to generalize even under a limited amount of adaptive questioning. Remarkably,
answering with differential privacy not only ensures privacy, but withhigh probability it ensures generalizability even for exponentially many
adaptively chosen queries. Thus, the deliberate introduction of noiseusing the techniques of differential privacy has profound and promising
implications for the validity of traditional scientific inquiry.

Appendices

A
The Gaussian Mechanism

Let f : N|X | → Rd be an arbitrary d-dimensional function, and define its`2 sensitivity to be ∆2 f = maxadjacentx,y kf (x) − f (y)k2 . The Gaussian
Mechanism with parameter σ adds noise scaled to N (0, σ 2 ) to each of
the d components of the output.
Theorem A.1. Let ε ∈ (0, 1) be arbitrary. For c2 > 2 ln(1.25/δ), theGaussian Mechanism with parameter σ ≥ c∆2 f /ε is (ε, δ)-differentiallyprivate.
Proof. There is a database D and a query f , and the mechanism will
return f (D)+η, where the noise is normally distributed. We are adding
noise N (0, σ 2 ). For now, assume we are talking about real-valued functions, so∆f = ∆1 f = ∆2 f.
We are looking at2lne(−1/2σ )x2e(−1/2σ2 )(x+∆f )2

.

(A.1)

We are investigating the probability, given that the database is D,of observing an output that occurs with a very different probability
261

262

The Gaussian Mechanism

under D than under an adjacent database D0 , where the probability
space is the noise generation algorithm. The numerator in the ratio
above describes the probability of seeing f (D) + x when the databaseis D, the denominator corresponds the probability of seeing this samevalue when the database is D0 . This is a ratio of probabilities, so it isalways positive, but the logarithm of the ratio may be negative. Our
random variable of interest — the privacy loss — is2lne(−1/2σ )x2e(−1/2σ2 )(x+∆f )2
and we are looking at its absolute value.
2lne(−1/2σ )x2e(−1/2σ2 )(x+∆f )2

2

2

2

= | ln e(−1/2σ )[x −(x+∆f ) ] |
= |−

1 2
[x − (x2 + 2x∆f + ∆f 2 )]|2σ 2

1(2x∆f + (∆f )2 )|.
(A.2)
2σ 2
This quantity is bounded by ε whenever x < σ 2 ε/∆f − ∆f /2. To
ensure privacy loss bounded by ε with probability at least 1 − δ, we
requirePr[|x| ≥ σ 2 ε/∆f − ∆f /2] < δ,=|and because we are concerned with |x| we will find σ such thatPr[x ≥ σ 2 ε/∆f − ∆f /2] < δ/2.
We will assume throughout that ε ≤ 1 ≤ ∆f .
We will use the tail boundσ22
Pr[x > t] ≤ √ e−t /2σ .
2π
We require:σ 1 −t2 /2σ2
√
e
< δ/2
2π t
1 2 2 √
⇔ σ e−t /2σ < 2πδ/2t√t t2 /2σ2⇔ e> 2/ 2πδσ√⇔ ln(t/σ) + t2 /2σ 2 > ln(2/ 2πδ).

263
Taking t = σ 2 ε/∆f − ∆f /2, we get√ln((σ 2 ε/∆f − ∆f /2)/σ) + (σ 2 ε/∆f − ∆f /2)2 /2σ 2 > ln(2/ 2πδ)
r

= ln

!

21
.
πδ

Let us write σ = c∆f /ε; we wish to bound c. We begin by finding theconditions under which the first term is non-negative.
ε
∆f
1
σ2
−
σ
∆f
2




1
=
σ

"

(∆f )2c2 2
ε

1 2 ∆f
=
c
σ
ε






ε
∆f
−
∆f
2

∆f
−
2

ε
∆f
=
c2
c∆f
ε
ε
= c− .
2c


!





#



∆f
−
2



ε
Since ε ≤ 1 and c ≥ 1, we have c − ε/(2c) ≥ c − 1/2. So ln( σ1 (σ 2 ∆f−∆f222 )) > 0 provided c ≥ 3/2. We can therefore focus on the t /σ term.

1 σ 2 ε ∆f−2σ 2 ∆f
2

!2

"

c2 1
−
ε
2

1
=
∆f
2σ 2
"
2

= (∆f )
1
=
2
=

c2 1
−
ε
2

c2 1
−
ε
2

!2

!#2

!#2 "

#

1
ε2
2
2
c (∆f ) 2

ε2
c2

1 2
(c − ε + ε2 /4c2 ).
2Since ε ≤ 1 the derivative of (c2 −ε+ε2 /4c2 ) with respect to c is positivein the range we are considering (c ≥ 3/2), so c2 − ε + ε2 /4c2 ≥ c2 − 8/9
and it suffices to ensure2

c − 8/9 > 2 ln

r

!

21
.
πδ

264

The Gaussian Mechanism

In other words, we need thatqc2 > 2 ln( 2/π) + 2 ln(1/δ) + ln(e8/9 ) = ln(2/π) + ln(e8/9 ) + 2 ln(1/δ),
which, since (2/π)e8/9 < 1.55, is satisfied whenever c2 > 2 ln(1.25/δ).
Let us parition R as R = R1 ∪ R2 , where R1 = {x ∈ R : |x| ≤c∆f /ε} and R2 = {x ∈ R : |x| > c∆f /ε}. Fix any subset S ⊆ R, anddefineS1 = {f (x) + x | x ∈ R1 }S2 = {f (x) + x | x ∈ R2 }.
We havePr[f (x) + x ∈ S] =x∼N (0,σ 2 )Prx∼N (0,σ 2 )+≤[f (x) + x ∈ S1 ][f (x) + x ∈ S2 ]Prx∼N (0,σ 2 )Pr[f (x) + x ∈ S1 ] + δx∼N (0,σ 2 )

!

≤e

ε

Pr

x∼N (0,σ 2 )[f (y) + x ∈ S1 ] + δ,yielding (ε, δ)-differential privacy for the Gaussian mechanism in one
dimension.
High Dimension. To extend this to functions in Rm , define ∆f =∆2 f . We can now repeat the argument, using Euclidean norms. Let v
be any vector satisfying kvk ≤ ∆f . For a fixed pair of databases x, y
we are interested in v = f (x) − f (y), since this is what our noise must
obscure. As in the one dimensional, case we seek conditions on σ underwhich the privacy loss
2

ln

2

e(−1/2σ )kx−µke(−1/2σ2 )kx+v−µk2

265
is bounded by ε; here x is chosen from N (0, Σ), where (Σ) is a diagonal
matrix with entries σ 2 , whence µ = (0, . . . , 0).
2

ln

2

e(−1/2σ )kx−µke(−1/2σ2 )kx+v−µk2

2

2

2

= | ln e(−1/2σ )[kx−µk −kx+v−µk ] |=1(kxk2 − kx + vk2 )) .
2σ 2

We will use the fact that the distribution of a spherically symmetric normal is independent of the orthogonal basis from which its constituent
normals are drawn, so we may work in a basis that is alligned with v.
Fix such a basis b1 , . . . , bm , and draw x by first drawing signed lengths
λi ∼ N (0, σ 2 ), for i ∈ [m], then defining x[i] = λi bi , and finally letting
P
[i]
x= m
i=1 x . Assume without loss of generality that b1 is parallel to v.
We are interested in | kxk2 − kx + vk2 |.
P[i]Consider the right triangle with base v + x[1] and edge m
i=2 x
orthogonal to v. The hypotenuse of this triangle is x + v.

kx + vk2 = kv + x[1] k2 +mX

kx[i] k2i=2

kxk2 =

mX

kx[i] k2 .

i=1

Since v is parallel to x[1] we have kv + x[1] k2 = (kvk + λ1 )2 . Thus,
kx + vk2 − kxk2 = kvk2 + 2λ1 · kvk. Recall that kvk ≤ ∆f , and λ ∼N (0, σ), so we are now exactly back in the one-dimensional case, writing
λ1 instead of x in Equation (A.2):
1
1(kxk2 − kx + vk2 )) ≤(2λ1 ∆f − (∆f )2 )
2
2σ
2σ 2
and the rest of the argument proceeds as above.
The argument for the high dimensional case highlights a weaknessof (ε, δ)-differential privacy that does not exist for (ε, 0)-differential
privacy. Fix a database x. In the (ε, 0)-case, the guarantee of indistinguishability holds for all adjacent databases simultaneously. In the

266

The Gaussian Mechanism(ε, δ) case indistinguishability only holds “prospectively,” i.e., for any
fixed y adjacent to x, the probability that the mechanism will allow theadversary to distinguish x from y is small. In the proof above, this ismanifested by the fact that we fixed v = f (x) − f (y); we did not haveto argue about all possible directions of v simultaneously, and indeed
we cannot, as once we have fixed our noise vector x ∼ N (0, Σ), so thatthe output on x is o = f (x) + x, there may exist an adjacent y suchthat output o = f (x) + x is much more likely when the database is ythan it is on x.

A.1

Bibliographic notes

Theorem A.1 is folklore initially observed by the authors of [23]. A generalization to non-spherical gaussian noise appears in [66].

BComposition Theorems for (ε, δ)-DP

B.1

Extension of Theorem 3.16

Theorem B.1. Let T1 (D) : D 7→ T1 (D) ∈ C1 be an (, δ)-d.p. function,and for any s1 ∈ C1 , T2 (D, s1 ) : (D, s1 ) 7→ T2 (D, s1 ) ∈ C2 be an (, δ)d.p. function given the second input s1 . Then we show that for any
neighboring D, D0 , for any S ⊆ C2 × C1 , we have, using the notation in
our paper
P ((T2 , T1 ) ∈ S) ≤ e2 P 0 ((T2 , T1 ) ∈ S) + 2δ.

(B.1)

Proof. For any C1 ⊆ C1 , defineµ(C1 ) = P (T1 ∈ C1 ) − e P 0 (T1 ∈ C1 ) + ,then µ is a measure on C1 and µ(C1 ) ≤ δ since T1 is (, δ)-d.p. As aresult, we have for all s1 ∈ C1 ,P (T1 ∈ ds1 ) ≤ e P 0 (T1 ∈ ds1 ) + µ(ds1 ).

(B.2)

Also note that by the definition of (, δ)-d.p., for any s1 ∈ C1 ,P ((T2 , s1 ) ∈ S) ≤ e P 0 ((T2 , s1 ) ∈ S) + δ ∧ 1
≤ e P 0 ((T2 , s1 ) ∈ S) ∧ 1 + δ.


267

(B.3)

268

Composition Theorems for (ε, δ)-DP
Then (B.2) and (B.3) give (B.1):

P ((T2 , T1 ) ∈ S) ≤Z

P ((T2 , s1 ) ∈ S)P (T1 ∈ ds1 )

S1

≤

Z

e P 0 ((T2 , s1 ) ∈ S) ∧ 1 + δ P (T1 ∈ ds1 )




S1

≤

Z

e P 0 ((T2 , s1 ) ∈ S) ∧ 1 P (T1 ∈ ds1 ) + δ




S1

≤

Z

e P 0 ((T2 , s1 ) ∈ S) ∧ 1




S1

× (e P 0 (T1 ∈ ds1 ) + µ(ds1 )) + δ
≤e

2

Z

P 0 ((T2 , s1 ) ∈ S)P 0 (T1 ∈ ds1 ) + µ(S1 ) + δS1≤ e2 P 0 ((T2 , T1 ) ∈ S) + 2δ.

(B.4)

In the equations above, S1 denotes the projection of S onto C1 .
The event {(T2 , s1 ) ∈ S} refers to {(T2 (D, s1 ), s1 ) ∈ S} (or{(T2 (D0 , s1 ), s1 ) ∈ S}).
Using induction, we have:
Corollary B.2 (general composition theorem for (, δ)-d.p. algorithms).
Let T1 : D 7→ T1 (D) be (, δ)-d.p., and for k ≥ 2, Tk :(D, s1 , . . . , sk−1 ) 7→ Tk (D, s1 , . . . , sk−1 ) ∈ Ck be (, δ)-d.p., for all
Nk−10
given (sk−1 , . . . , s1 ) ∈j=1 Cj . Then for all neighboring D, D and
Nk
all S ⊆ j=1 Cj
P ((T1 , . . . , Tk ) ∈ S) ≤ ek P 0 ((T1 , . . . , Tk ) ∈ S) + kδ.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank many people for providing careful comments
and corrections on early drafts of this book, including Vitaly Feldman,
Justin Hsu, Simson Garfinkel, Katrina Ligett, Dong Lin, David Parkes,
Ryan Rogers, Guy Rothblum, Ian Schmutte, Jon Ullman, Salil Vadhan,Zhiwei Steven Wu, and the anonymous referees. This book was used
in a course taught by Salil Vadhan and Jon Ullman, whose students
also provided careful feedback. This book has also benefited from conversations with many other colleagues, including Moritz Hardt, Ilya
Mironov, Sasho Nikolov, Kobbi Nissim, Mallesh Pai, Benjamin Pierce,
Adam Smith, Abhradeep Thakurta, Abhishek Bhowmick, Kunal Talwar, and Li Zhang. We are grateful to Madhu Sudan for proposing thismonograph.

269

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