"Google Expands Open-Source Software Portfolio With New Privacy Capabilities"

Google has announced two open-source solutions to help organizations more easily process user data in accordance with privacy requirements. The first technology is called Magritte, which blurs items in videos, such as license plates. The other is a new version of FHE C++ Transpiler, a privacy tool first launched by Google last year. It enables applications to process encrypted data sets without first decrypting them. Magritte is based on one of Google's internal software projects and uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to determine when a video has an object containing sensitive data. The item is then blurred by Magritte, eliminating the need for video editing teams to execute the process manually. The AI functions are enabled in part by MediaPipe, another open-source Google technology. This technology allows developers to create AI applications that can run on low-power computing devices such as cell phones. The Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) encryption technology, on which Google's FHE C++ Transpiler tool is based, eliminates the requirement for data to be decrypted before processing. As a result, the strategy enables businesses to reduce the risk caused by cyberattacks. In practice, however, utilizing FHE to improve security is challenging due to a number of technological issues. Running FHE software today demands a significant amount of infrastructure. Another obstacle is that the technology is difficult to install for developers. Google says that its open-source FHE C++ Transpiler tool simplifies FHE deployment. The tool is capable of analyzing a piece of code initially written to process decrypted data and automatically adapting it to execute on FHE-encrypted data. Therefore, developers are able to build apps that can process encrypted data with less effort than was previously necessary. This article continues to discuss Google's privacy-enhancing technologies. 

SiliconANGLE reports "Google Expands Open-Source Software Portfolio With New Privacy Capabilities"