On Perfect Privacy
The problem of private data disclosure is studied from an information theoretic perspective. Considering a pair of dependent random variables (X, Y), where X and Y denote the private and useful data, respectively, the following problem is addressed: What is the maximum information that can be revealed about Y, measured by mutual information I(Y; U), in which U denotes the revealed data, while disclosing no information about X, captured by the condition of statistical independence, i.e., X ⊥ U, and henceforth called perfect privacy)?