PEPR '24 - Don't End Up in the PETs Cemetery

PEPR '24 - Don't End Up in the PETs Cemetery
Simon Fondrie-Teitler, Federal Trade Commission, Office of Technology
Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) offer a useful set of tools for building products and functionality while protecting the privacy of users' data. But the methods and implementations exist on a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, they allow a company to offer products and services without ever having access to a user's data. On the other, they are a small layer on top of otherwise unfettered access to an individual's data. This talk will discuss where two technologies in particular, multi-party computation and private relays, fall on this spectrum. It will describe the Federal Trade Commission's optimism about PETs. It will also emphasize that because not all PETs are on the fully private end of the spectrum, companies making representations to consumers about their use of PETs must follow the law and ensure that any privacy claims or representations are accurate.
View the full PEPR '24 program at www.usenix.org...