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An Information-Theoretic Privacy Criterion for Query Forgery in Information Retrieval

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Security Technology (SecTech 2011)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 259))

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Abstract

In previous work, we presented a novel information-theoretic privacy criterion for query forgery in the domain of information retrieval. Our criterion measured privacy risk as a divergence between the user’s and the population’s query distribution, and contemplated the entropy of the user’s distribution as a particular case. In this work, we make a twofold contribution. First, we thoroughly interpret and justify the privacy metric proposed in our previous work, elaborating on the intimate connection between the celebrated method of entropy maximization and the use of entropies and divergences as measures of privacy. Secondly, we attempt to bridge the gap between the privacy and the information-theoretic communities by substantially adapting some technicalities of our original work to reach a wider audience, not intimately familiar with information theory and the method of types.

This work was partly supported by the Spanish Government through projects Consolider Ingenio 2010 CSD2007-00004 “ARES”, TEC2010-20572-C02-02 “Consequence” and by the Government of Catalonia under grant 2009 SGR 1362. D. Rebollo-Monedero is the recipient of a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral fellowship, JCI-2009-05259, from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Telematics Engineering, Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), E-08034, Barcelona, Spain

    David Rebollo-Monedero, Javier Parra-Arnau & Jordi Forné

Authors
  1. David Rebollo-Monedero
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  2. Javier Parra-Arnau
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  3. Jordi Forné
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Multimedia Engineering Department, Hannam University, 133 Ojeong-dong, Daeduk-gu, Daejeon, Korea

    Tai-hoon Kim

  2. The Ohio State University, 470 Hitchcock Hall, 2070 Neil Avenue, 43210-1275, Columbus, OH, USA

    Hojjat Adeli

  3. National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C.

    Wai-chi Fang

  4. Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040, Madrid, Spain

    Javier García Villalba

  5. Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS, USA

    Kirk P. Arnett

  6. Center of Excellence in Information Assurance, King Saud University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    Muhammad Khurram Khan

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Rebollo-Monedero, D., Parra-Arnau, J., Forné, J. (2011). An Information-Theoretic Privacy Criterion for Query Forgery in Information Retrieval. In: Kim, Th., Adeli, H., Fang, Wc., Villalba, J.G., Arnett, K.P., Khan, M.K. (eds) Security Technology. SecTech 2011. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 259. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27189-2_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27189-2_16

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-27188-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-27189-2

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