Researchers say you can surveil everyone and see only the criminals

Yale computer scientists Aaron Segal, Bryan Ford, and Joan Feigenbaum paint an idyllic picture of a potential surveillance environment that’s heavy on reach and light on breach.

The paper, “Catching Bandits and Only Bandits: Privacy-Preserving Intersection Warrants for Lawful Surveillance,” proposes combining a system of checks and balances with cryptographic techniques to let investigators identify records of interest without exposing anyone else’s data.