Private information is meant to be private. But if ever they find their way to the internet, Google wants to ensure that they retain at least some of their privacy.
Google is the tech giant of the internet, and this time, it has announced that two of its privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), have been made available for anyone to use for free via open-source.
The tools are part of Google’s Protected Computing initiative designed to transform "how, when and where data is processed to technically ensure its privacy and safety," the company said.
The first tool is an internal project called 'Magritte.'
According to Google in a blog post:
"By using this open-source code, videographers can save time in blurring objects from a video, while knowing that the underlying ML algorithm can perform detection across a video with high-accuracy."
The tool uses what's called the processing graphs to detect things, like faces, and track their movements in videos, and disguise the person's identity by obfuscating their face.
"Processing graphs are built from feature subgraphs that solve sub-problems such as detecting or tracking faces (without recognizing them), determining the area to be redacted, and applying de-identification effect to this area (e.g., blurring, pixelization or sticker redaction)," explained Google in Magritte's GitHub page.
Beyond that, Magritte can also be used to disguise arbitrary objects like license plates, tattoos and more.
But Google mentioned in another post that the object does not matter, meaning that Magritte can be programmed to blur anything.
However, Magritte can be used far outside the realm of digital privacy.
For example, it can be used to automatically censor NSFW content on the web.
The next tool Google open sources, is called the 'Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) Transpiler.' What it does, is allowing developers to perform computations on encrypted data without being able to access personally identifiable information.
According to Google, the tool can help industries like financial services, healthcare and government, "where a robust security guarantee around the processing of sensitive data is of highest importance."
In a post by the White House:
"As more aspects of our daily lives continue to become digitized, the technology industry’s responsibility to keep personal data safe grows," said Google.
"PETs ensure Google can provide great experiences like helping you find a restaurant’s most popular dishes or getting better recommendations as you type a message, all while keeping our users’ information anonymous and protected."
Google reported that in 2022, the governments of the U.S. and the UK have both organized competitions to create PET solutions for financial crime and public health situations.
In its release, Google explains how PETs can significantly help enhance privacy, saying that "we believe that every internet user in the world deserves world-class privacy, and we’ll continue partnering with organizations to further that goal."
However, Google simply ignores the issues Google is having.
For example, the company has just paid hundreds of millions of dollars to settle a lawsuit against 40 state attorneys general after the company allegedly misled users about when it was siphoning users’ location data.