A Private Information Retrieval (PIR) protocol enables a user to
retrieve a data item from a database while hiding the identity of the
item being retrieved. In a $t$-private, $k$-server PIR protocol the
database is replicated among $k$ servers, and the user's privacy is
protected from any collusion of up ... more >>>

We prove exponential lower bounds on the length of 2-query
locally decodable codes. Goldreich et al. recently proved such bounds
for the special case of linear locally decodable codes.
Our proof shows that a 2-query locally decodable code can be decoded
with only 1 quantum query, and then ... more >>>

We show that any 1-round 2-server Private Information
Retrieval Protocol where the answers are 1-bit long must ask questions
that are at least $n-2$ bits long, which is nearly equal to the known
$n-1$ upper bound. This improves upon the approximately $0.25n$ lower
bound of Kerenidis and de Wolf while ... more >>>

A t-private private information retrieval (PIR) scheme allows a user to retrieve the i-th bit of an n-bit string x replicated among k servers, while any coalition of up to t servers learns no information about i. We present a new geometric approach to PIR, and obtain (1) A t-private ... more >>>

A two server private information retrieval (PIR) scheme
allows a user U to retrieve the i-th bit of an
n-bit string x replicated between two servers while each
server individually learns no information about i. The main
parameter of interest in a PIR scheme is its communication
complexity, namely the ... more >>>

A q-query Locally Decodable Code (LDC) encodes an n-bit message
x as an N-bit codeword C(x), such that one can
probabilistically recover any bit x_i of the message
by querying only q bits of the codeword C(x), even after
some constant fraction of codeword bits has been corrupted.

We give ... more >>>

In cryptography, there has been tremendous success in building
primitives out of homomorphic semantically-secure encryption
schemes, using homomorphic properties in a black-box way. A few
notable examples of such primitives include items like private
information retrieval schemes and collision-resistant hash functions. In this paper, we illustrate a general
methodology for ... more >>>

Locally Decodable Codes (LDC) allow one to decode any particular
symbol of the input message by making a constant number of queries
to a codeword, even if a constant fraction of the codeword is
damaged. In recent work ~\cite{Yekhanin08} Yekhanin constructs a
$3$-query LDC with sub-exponential length of size
$\exp(\exp(O(\frac{\log ... more >>>

A $k$-query locally decodable code (LDC)
$\textbf{C}:\Sigma^{n}\rightarrow \Gamma^{N}$ encodes each message $x$ into
a codeword $\textbf{C}(x)$ such that each symbol of $x$ can be probabilistically
recovered by querying only $k$ coordinates of $\textbf{C}(x)$, even after a
constant fraction of the coordinates have been corrupted.
Yekhanin (2008)
constructed a $3$-query LDC ... more >>>

A 2-server Private Information Retrieval (PIR) scheme allows a user to retrieve the $i$th bit of an $n$-bit database replicated among two servers (which do not communicate) while not revealing any information about $i$ to either server. In this work we construct a 1-round 2-server PIR with total communication cost ... more >>>

We show that any $q$-query locally decodable code (LDC) gives a copy of $\ell_1^k$ with small distortion in the Banach space of $q$-linear forms on $\ell_{p_1}^N\times\cdots\times\ell_{p_q}^N$, provided $1/p_1 + \cdots + 1/p_q \leq 1$ and where $k$, $N$, and the distortion are simple functions of the code parameters. We exhibit ... more >>>

In this paper, we construct new t-server Private Information Retrieval (PIR) schemes with communication complexity subpolynomial in the previously best known, for all but finitely many t. Our results are
based on combining derivatives (in the spirit of Woodruff-Yekhanin) with the Matching Vector
based PIRs of Yekhanin and Efremenko. Previously ... more >>>