Privacy Enhancing Technologies

How can technology support data governance and enable new, innovative uses of data for public benefit?

The Royal Society’s Privacy Enhancing Technologies programme investigates the potential for tools and approaches collectively known as Privacy Enhancing Technologies, or PETs, in maximising the benefit and reducing the harms associated with data use. The report was published in 2023.

From privacy to partnership: the role of Privacy Enhancing Technologies in data governance and collaborative analysis (PDF), was undertaken in close collaboration with the Alan Turing InThis report builds on the Royal Society’s 2019 publication Protecting privacy in practice: the current use, development and limits of Privacy Enhancing Technologies for data analysis (PDF). Protecting privacy in practice presented a high-level overview of PETs and identified how these technologies could play a role in addressing privacy in applied data science research, digital strategies and data-driven business.

What are Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs)?

Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) are a suite of tools that can help maximise the use of data by reducing risks inherent to data use. Some PETs provide new tools for anonymisation, while others enable collaborative analysis on privately-held datasets, allowing data to be used without disclosing copies of data. PETs are multi-purpose: they can reinforce data governance choices, serve as tools for data collaboration or enable greater accountability through audit. For these reasons, PETs have also been described as “Partnership Enhancing Technologies” or “Trust Technologies”.

What is data privacy, and why is it important?

The data we generate every day holds a lot of value and potentially also contains sensitive information that individuals or organisations might not wish to share with everyone. The protection of personal or sensitive data featured prominently in the social and ethical tensions identified in our 2017 British Academy and Royal Society report Data management and use: Governance in the 21st century.

Recommendations from the report:

• National and supernational organisations, including standards development organisations (SDOs) should establish protocols and standards for PETs, and their technical components, as a priority
• Science funders, including governments and intergovernmental bodies, should accelerate and incentivise the development and maturation of PETs by funding prize challenges, pathfinder projects (such as topic guides or resource lists) and cross-border, collaborative test environments (such as an international PETs sandbox)
• Researchers, regulators and enforcement authorities should investigate the wider social and economic implications of PETs, for example, how PETs might be used in novel harms (such as fraud or linking datasets for increased surveillance) or how PETs might affect competition in digitised markets (such as monopolies through new network effects)
• The UK Government should develop a national PETs strategy to promote the responsible use of PETs in data governance: as tools for data protection and security, for collaboration and partnership (both domestically and cross-border) and for advancing scientific research
• Local, devolved and national governments across the UK should lead by example in the adoption of PETs for data sharing and use across government and in public-private partnerships, improving awareness by communicating PETs-enabled projects and their results
• The UK Government should ensure that new data protection reforms account for the new systems of data governance enabled by emerging technologies such as PETs and ensure any new regulations are supported by clear, scenario-specific guidance and assessment tools
• Universities, businesses and science funders should fund foundational scholarship in PETs-related fields, such as cryptography and statistics
• Organisations providing certifications and continuing professional development courses in data science, cybersecurity and related fields should incorporate PETs modules to raise awareness among data professionals

Our current Working Group included: Professor Alison Noble OBE FREng FIET FRS (Chair), Professor Jon Crowcroft FREng FRS, Mr George Balston, Dr Anthony Finkelstein CBE FREng, Mr Guy Cohen, Dr Benjamin Curtis, Professor Emiliano de Cristofaro, Dr Marion Oswald, Professor Carsten Maple and Dr Suzanne Weller.

References:

From privacy to partnership: the role of Privacy Enhancing Technologies in data governance and collaborative analysis (PDF)

UK public sector PETs adoption (PDF)

PETs standards and assurances (PDF)

Protecting privacy in practice: the current use, development and limits of Privacy Enhancing Technologies for data analysis (PDF)

Data management and use: Governance in the 21st century

Privacy Enhancing Technologies project terms of reference