{DatashareNetwork}: A Decentralized {Privacy-Preserving} Search Engine for Investigative Journalists

K EdalatNejad, W Lueks, JP Martin, S Ledésert… - 29th USENIX Security …, 2020 - usenix.org
K EdalatNejad, W Lueks, JP Martin, S Ledésert, A L'Hôte, B Thomas, L Girod, C Troncoso
29th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 20), 2020usenix.org
Investigative journalists collect large numbers of digital documents during their
investigations. These documents can greatly benefit other journalists' work. However, many
of these documents contain sensitive information. Hence, possessing such documents can
endanger reporters, their stories, and their sources. Consequently, many documents are
used only for single, local, investigations. We present DatashareNetwork, a decentralized
and privacy-preserving search system that enables journalists worldwide to find documents …
Abstract
Investigative journalists collect large numbers of digital documents during their investigations. These documents can greatly benefit other journalists' work. However, many of these documents contain sensitive information. Hence, possessing such documents can endanger reporters, their stories, and their sources. Consequently, many documents are used only for single, local, investigations. We present DatashareNetwork, a decentralized and privacy-preserving search system that enables journalists worldwide to find documents via a dedicated network of peers. DatashareNetwork combines well-known anonymous authentication mechanisms and anonymous communication primitives, a novel asynchronous messaging system, and a novel multi-set private set intersection protocol (MS-PSI) into a decentralized peer-to-peer private document search engine. Using a prototype implementation, we show that DatashareNetwork is secure and scales to thousands of users and millions of documents.
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