A few slides to introduce the STPPA #2 event. We start by recalling the scope of the Privacy-Enhancing Cryptography (PEC) project, then explain the scope of the "Special Topics on Privacy and Public Auditability" (STPPA) series and present today's expected schedule.

(Note: the first mentioned scheduled talk was postponed to the future event STPPA #3)

Private set intersection (PSI) is a special case of multiparty computation, in which each party has a set of items and the goal is to learn the intersection of those sets while revealing nothing else about those sets. In this talk I will survey and summarize the state of the art for PSI protocol techniques. I will highlight several different categories of PSI techniques, each motivated through different, realistic application scenarios.

There are myriad domains where communities could benefit from aggregate statistical analyses that link across databases without requiring data owners to share their underlying data. In many cases, however, an obligation to protect the privacy of the underlying data often prevents organizations from performing (joint) statistical analyses that would benefit the community as a whole. Some common examples include: linking Electronic Medical Records (EMR) for longitudinal studies; student and teacher performance records; monitoring international financial transactions; environmental and hazard records; transportation and automotive studies; studies on logistics for managing vendor and supply chains; personal genetics and ancestry studies; cell phone call and location records; energy efficient HVAC and building management systems; digital statistics and cyber forensics.

In principle, general-purpose secure multiparty computation protocols exist that allow a group of mutually untrusting data owners to compute any function of interest across their joint data. This flexibility of functionality comes at a price, however, and existing MPC compilers target developers with a high-level of cryptographic expertise.  Our work focuses on building a simple, easy-to-deploy interface that allows non-crypto experts to securely compute a limited but optimized set of statistics on jointly held data.

Panel with the STPPA#2 invited speakers, with questions moderated by the NIST-PEC team. An informal conversation that covered the following topics: (00:02:48) stakeholders of crypto developments; (00:15:00) is technical understanding a barrier for adoption; (00:27:04) comment on good/bad use; (00:28:10) how can NIST-PEC help; (00:31:53, from audience) marketing vs. technical claims; (00:39:15, from audience) implementation difficulties/time/laws/areas; (47:20) awareness and value of privacy and verifiable magic; (57:28) final thanks.