Post hoc privacy auditing techniques can be used to test the privacy guarantees of a model, but come with several limitations: (i) they can only establish lower bounds on the privacy loss, (ii) the intermediate model updates and some data must beshared with the auditor to get a better approximation of the privacy loss, and (iii) the auditor typically faces a steep computational cost to run a large number of attacks. In this paper, we propose to proactively generate a cryptographic certificate of privacy during training to forego such auditing limitations. We introduce Confidential-DPproof , a framework for Confidential Proof of Differentially Private Training, which enhances training with a certificate of the (ε, δ)-DP guarantee achieved. To obtain this certificate without revealing information about the training data or model, we design a customized zero-knowledge proof protocol tailored to the requirements introduced by differentially private training, including random noise addition and privacy amplification by subsampling. In experiments on CIFAR-10, Confidential-DPproof trains a model achieving state-of-the-art 91% test accuracy with a certified privacy guarantee of (ε = 0.55, δ = 10−5)-DP in approximately 100 hours.
Open access
Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems
Occupational and Professional Licensing Regulation
For health practitioners, accreditation processes are necessary for their career development. The importance is not restricted to attesting competencies and skills, it may even certify that some professionals are legally capable and authorized to perform a specific complex procedures, such as kidney transplantation. For example, physicians are crossing national borders with their practice, especially in Europe, and patients are becoming more demanding, thus in need of reliable information regarding health professionals. In this context, we propose a scenario to exemplify and to elucidate an emerging problem, that is, an opportunity. Let us consider that a group of national societies on transplantation biology and medicine decides to create an International Accreditation System for health professionals. The system would be a decentralized institution composed of multiple organizations, because accreditation is about trustworthiness, which naturally suggests the use of blockchain technology. Hence, in this work, we propose the use of blockchain and service design in healthcare, as fundamentals for the conceptual design of an international accreditation system for health professionals. Additionally, this work may be understood as a strategy for modeling, designing and developing healthcare systems based on blockchain technology.
Open access
Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
Occupational and Professional Licensing Regulation
"Lennie" refers to Lennie Small, the intellectually disabled character in John Steinbeck's famous novella Of Mice and Men, which tells the story of two Depression-era wandering farmhands, George and Lennie, who dream of getting their own stake and living "off the fat of the land." Their dream dies hard when Lennie accidently kills the young, beautiful, and flirtatious wife of a ranch owner's son and then tries to cover it up because he realizes that he has "done a bad thing." George, in turn, kills Lennie to prevent him from being lynched or tried for murder. Lennie was doomed because he lived in a fictional world where virtually no one understood the nature and severity of his intellectual disability, and thus people were predisposed to believe that Lennie was a cold-blooded murderer who deserved the ultimate punishment. But how would Lennie fare today--not in Steinbeck's fictional Depression-era America, but in the twenty-first century and in our current criminal justice system? Is the criminal justice system equipped to fairly treat mentally retarded defendants in the quest for "truth"? In this article we have argued for a number of procedural protections to safeguard mentally retarded defendants against the heightened risk of wrongful conviction, i.e., providing counsel or an advocate with training in mental retardation, creating safeguards against the admissibility of false confessions, assuring the reliability of informant and codefendant testimony, informing the jury of the heightened risk of error and altering current burdens of proof. We have elected to sketch several procedural protections rather than defend one or another as the most crucial. For any criminal justice system committed to protecting the Lennies of the world against the heigbtened risk of being found guilty of crimes they did not commit, these procedures are a necessary beginning.
Open access
Criminal Law and Evidence
Occupational and Professional Licensing Regulation
Although lawyers made crucial contributions to the development of business, scholars have said little about their role. As the following article explains, lawyers fought restrictions on business growth, worked to make laws uniform, and helped to establish legal rules in the areas of corporate reorganization, finance, and regulation. Pioneering a new type of organization—the large firm—they moved beyond the realm of legal doctrine and acquired the political influence, local knowledge, and community connections needed to reform the nation's decentralized legal system in ways that fit the demands of national-scale business.
American History and Culture
Occupational and Professional Licensing Regulation