What to Consider When Considering Differential Privacy for Policy

TL;DR

This paper discusses the practical challenges of applying differential privacy in policy contexts and provides a framework of questions for policymakers to evaluate its suitability and impact.

Contribution

It introduces a categorization of challenges and questions to help policymakers better understand and evaluate differential privacy in real-world applications.

Findings

Identifies three key challenge categories for understanding DP.

Provides a set of questions for policymakers to assess DP deployment.

Highlights the gap between DP theory and practical policy implementation.

Abstract

Differential privacy (DP) is a mathematical definition of privacy that can be widely applied when publishing data. DP has been recognized as a potential means of adhering to various privacy-related legal requirements. However, it can be difficult to reason about whether DP may be appropriate for a given context due to tensions that arise when it is brought from theory into practice. To aid policymaking around privacy concerns, we identify three categories of challenges to understanding DP along with associated questions that policymakers can ask about the potential deployment context to anticipate its impacts.