PULSAR-VLDS

PULSAR-VLDS demonstrates secure, privacy-protecting computation of statistics from sensitive data held in multiple government organizations. PULSAR-VLDS is a partnership between Stealth Software Technologies, a leader in privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), and the Virginia Longitudinal Data System (VLDS), a pioneering collaboration among state agencies to produce better data for public policy. PULSAR-VLDS is an innovative application of Secure Multiparty Computation (MPC) to overcome the barriers to sharing data among agencies while protecting private information. Policy-makers frequently require statistics involving data from multiple sources. Although these reports would not compromise individual privacy, sharing data across agencies with varying regulations and legal limitations is expensive, time consuming, and often impossible. MPC uses cryptography to join and aggregate data from separate databases without releasing any private information. Each database owner controls the keys to their own data, and no unencrypted data is ever released. The PULSAR-VLDS platform uses new architectures and tools to overcome limitations of previous MPC technologies. PULSAR-VLDS provides:

1. Strong data-privacy guarantees where unencrypted individual data is never shared or revealed to other agencies during computation process

2. Accurate statistical results, because the outcome does not use inaccuracy (e.g., noise) to mask identities

3. Immediate answers, because computations do not depend upon deidentifying and collecting data in a single place

4. Efficiency and scalability, due to Stealth Software’s fast and innovative software

PULSAR-VLDS also includes additional disclosure protections developed by VLDS for aggregate data. PULSAR-VLDS is designed to automate privacy protections in a modular manner that allows manual intervention where necessary. VLDS anticipates that the new platform will increase the number of state agencies willing to collaborate and will enable new policy-relevant statistics and analyses.

Building

To build PULSAR-VLDS, you must be using Linux or Mac and you must install the following tools:

• Docker version 24.0.0 or later. Installation instructions can be found at https://docs.docker.com/engine/install/. To check your installed version, run docker --version (example output: Docker version 24.0.6).

• GNU Make version 4.2.1 or later. This can be installed on Ubuntu with sudo apt install make, or on a Mac with brew install make. To check your installed version, run make --version (example output: GNU Make 4.3).

• XZ Utils. This can be installed on Ubuntu with sudo apt install xz-utils, or on a Mac with brew install xz.

• A C compiler. This can be installed on Ubuntu with sudo apt install gcc, or on a Mac with brew install gcc.

• Info-ZIP. This can be installed on Ubuntu with sudo apt install zip, or on a Mac with brew install zip.

• SQLite3. This can be installed on Ubuntu with sudo apt install sqlite3, or on a Mac with brew install sqlite3.

Next, run the following commands in a clean copy of this repository:

./configure
make windows-portable-java

This will produce pulsar-vlds-1.0.0-windows-portable-java.zip, which can be used on any Windows machine with Java installed.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by DARPA and NIWC Pacific under contract N66001-15-C-4065. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes not withstanding any copyright notation thereon. The views, opinions, and/or findings expressed are those of the author(s) and should not be interpreted as representing the official views or policies of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.