A Rudimentary Model for Low-Latency Anonymous Communication Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a basic model for low-latency anonymous communication systems, analyzing the anonymity leakage and trade-offs with communication complexity using distributed OR algorithms.

Contribution

It provides new lower bounds on anonymity leakage and explores the relationship between anonymity and communication complexity in such systems.

Findings

Lower bounds on anonymity leakage for deterministic OR algorithms

Trade-offs between anonymity and communication complexity

Relationship between the model and secret sharing schemes

Abstract

In this paper we present a rudimentary model for low-latency anonymous communication systems. Specifically, we study distributed OR algorithm as an abstract of the system. Based on our model, we give several satisfactory lower bounds of anonymity leakage of a deterministic OR algorithm. Some of them reveal a trade-off between anonymity and communication complexity. For the randomized OR algorithm, we only give a relatively trivial but possibly tight lower bound when leaving out communication complexity. And we find the relationship between our model and some open case in the study of secret sharing scheme, if considering communication complexity.