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Dawn Song, a Berkeley, an IT professor and colleague MacArthur, is a cloud computing fan. He also thinks that he needs an important rethinking. "Cloud and Internet have fundamentally changed our lives especially for good," he says. "But they have serious problems with privacy and security: users and companies lose control of their data".
The outsourcing and processing of data on the Internet has given businesses new flexibility and consumers the power to stop racing, find dates and socialize from a sheet of glass in their pockets. The same technologies have also allowed data theft, hunting companies on our personal lives and new forms of election manipulation.
The song says that its startup, Oasis Labs, can reduce some of these problems with the help of blockchain, the new form of encryption-protected recording inspired by the bitcoin digital currency. Oasis announced a $ 45 million loan this week, from a combination of Silicon Valley's large VC funds and cryptocurrency investors. Song and one of his co-founders have already tested some of their ideas, contributing to the installation of new privacy protection measures on Uber, the unicorn who greets around whose troubled past includes security incidents.
Co-founders of Oasis Labs, from left to right: the privacy officer Noah Johnson, the chief operating officer Bobby Jaros, the managing director Dawn Song and the chief technician Raymond Cheng.
Elena Zhukova / Oasis Labs
In 2014, Uber was shaken by accusations that executives and employees spied on customer movements, using tools such as a map dubbed "God View". Two years later, the company agreed with the New York State Attorney General and promised to protect data on the pilot's position. Oasis has grown in part thanks to a 2017 project in which Song and two university students, one of whom became a co-founder of the Berkeley startup, helped Uber create a more sophisticated security network.
Berkeley researchers helped create and implement an open source tool that limits how employees can learn about individual customers by analyzing pilot data. It is based on a technique called differential privacy, designed to protect the identity of people even when data is supposedly rendered anonymous. It is also used by Apple to collect data from iPhones without risking customer privacy. In the Uber system, employees can query a database, for example, to summarize recent trips to a particular area. Behind the scenes, algorithms evaluate the risk that the request will lose information about individuals and inject random noise into the data to neutralize that risk. Ask about recent rides in a large city and little or no noise will be needed; ask the same for a specific place, such as the White House, and much more randomness will be added to obscure traces that could represent specific individuals.
Uber's differential privacy software does not use a blockchain, a sort of cryptographic protected digital record system that can limit and record who makes changes or additions. The song says that privacy and security systems can be much stronger if they do. We must take Uber's word that the company has correctly implemented its differential secrecy system, for example. Companies that build privacy or security systems connected to the Oasis Labs blockchain will be able to provide cryptographic guarantees to one another, or to their customers, that their systems are doing what has been promised , says Song. Describes Oasis Labs in an effort to provide the Internet security and privacy infrastructure that we are paying for and pay a price for.
The Oasis Labs platform can also host small programs, dubbed smart contracts, able to mediate transactions between different people or companies. This makes it similar to ethereum, the second most valuable cryptocurrency system. But Oasis Labs' blockchain is specifically designed to enable security applications and is based on Berkeley's research according to which Song states that it makes the system more scalable and practical than existing blockchains.
The song says that his company is talking to organizations in the healthcare, finance and ecommerce sectors, hoping to use the Oasis platform when it will be launched completely, probably next year. A large e-commerce company is interested in building internal privacy controls like those of Uber, for example, and sharing more data on the supply chain with partners while protecting commercially sensitive information. Another project is creating a way for healthcare patients to donate medical data for research on machine learning. Oasis technology will be used to assure patients that their data can not be transferred for other uses. For the ultra-paranoid, Oasis plans to integrate its software with an open source security chip under development by Berkeley and MIT, similar to the chip that supports iPhone security, to protect critical smart contracts against l & # 39; interference.
Oasis Labs is starting up at a time when blockchain projects have some credibility problems. The total value of all cryptocurrencies is estimated at over $ 250 billion, and venture capitalists have invested over $ 1 billion in startup blockchain last year, according to CB Insights. But cryptocurrencies are not widely used and are ruined by scammers, thieves and poor security. Corporate blockchain projects have generated more hot air and clamor than practical technology.
Song says that the clamor around the blockchain and the adventures of some devotees distract from a real opportunity to redo the foundations of how computers we need. "People should not throw the baby out with dirty water," he says.
Christian Catalini, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, says that Song is not the only deep thinker of computer science that feels that way. "More talents from the academic world have entered the market," he says, "It's a new trend." For example, the Johns Hopkins and MIT researchers are contributing to the development of ZCash, a cryptocurrency designed to offer completely anonymous digital transactions. JP Morgan is collaborating with the project, saying that anonymity could help companies keep their finances more private Last year, Cornell and Northwestern professors launched a startup called bloXroute Labs to make cryptocurrencies more scalable, a problem that has tormented bitcoin and ethereum.
Catalini believes that profs rubbing patches on elbows with blockchain fanatics could help make more of the dreams of the youth sector. Yet, with funded projects ranging from efforts to provide better marine insurance to "cryptoassets" claiming to fight climate change, they will probably not all work. "The vast majority of these projects will fail," says Catalini. "But in phases of extreme technological experimentation, people explore in many different directions, and this is good for society in the long run."
