Differentially private security system using gaussian noise and dynamic step size

Abstract

Example differential privacy techniques include receiving a request to perform a query on a set of data stored by a database. The request identifies a target accuracy and a maximum privacy spend. The target accuracy includes a maximum relative error. The maximum privacy spend includes a value of a zero-concentrated privacy parameter ρ associated with a degree of information released about the set of data due to the query. A differentially private count operation is performed on the set of data to produce a differentially private result. The differentially private count operation includes performing a count operation on data to produce a result and perturbing the result to produce a differentially private result using a noise value sampled from a Gaussian distribution and based on a fractional privacy spend comprising a fraction of the maximum privacy spend. The differentially private result is encoded for transmission to the client device.