[messaging] PIR (in Pynchon Gate)

[Ian Goldberg]

On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 11:48:40PM -0700, Brian Warner wrote:
> On 3/23/14 4:59 PM, Trevor Perrin wrote:
> 
> > My vague understanding of PIR is that "single-server" schemes are less
> > practical than just sending the whole database, but there are
> > "multi-server" schemes which are somewhat-efficient and secure as long
> > as all servers don't collude. (Is that right? Could anyone explain PIR
> > in a separate thread?)

There are actually single-server PIR schemes that are more efficient
than sending the whole database as well.  See, for example, our
measurement paper at

http://www.cypherpunks.ca/~iang/pubs/mspir.pdf

I can explain much more about PIR, but I'm heading off just right now.

   - Ian