In secure multiparty computation, mutually distrusting users in a network
want to collaborate to compute functions of data which is distributed among the
users. The users should not learn any additional information about the data of
others than what they may infer from their own data and the functions they are
computing. Previous works have mostly considered the worst case context (i.e.,
without assuming any distribution for the data); Lee and Abbe (2014) is a
notable exception. Here, we study the average case (i.e., we work with a
distribution on the data) where correctness and privacy is only desired
asymptotically.
For concreteness and simplicity, we consider a secure version of the function
computation problem of K\"orner and Marton (1979) where two users observe a
doubly symmetric binary source with parameter p and the third user wants to
compute the XOR. We show that the amount of communication and randomness
resources required depends on the level of correctness desired. When zero-error
and perfect privacy are required, the results of Data et al. (2014) show that
it can be achieved if and only if a total rate of 1 bit is communicated between
every pair of users and private randomness at the rate of 1 is used up. In
contrast, we show here that, if we only want the probability of error to vanish
asymptotically in block length, it can be achieved by a lower rate (binary
entropy of p) for all the links and for private randomness; this also
guarantees perfect privacy. We also show that no smaller rates are possible
even if privacy is only required asymptotically.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, extended version of submission to IEEE Information
Theory Workshop, 201