A Simple Differentially Private Algorithm for Global Minimum Cut

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple, efficient, and more natural differentially private algorithm for the global minimum cut problem, improving privacy and utility guarantees over previous methods with fewer calls to the exponential mechanism.

Contribution

It presents a novel, streamlined differentially private algorithm for global minimum cut that outperforms prior work in simplicity, efficiency, and utility.

Findings

Simpler algorithm with fewer calls to the exponential mechanism

Improved privacy and utility guarantees

More natural and efficient approach

Abstract

In this note, we present a simple differentially private algorithm for the global minimum cut problem using only one call to the exponential mechanism. This problem was first studied by Gupta et al. [2010], and they gave a differentially private algorithm with near-optimal utility guarantees. We improve upon their work in many aspects: our algorithm is simpler, more natural, and more efficient than the one given in Gupta et al. [2010], and furthermore provides slightly better privacy and utility guarantees.