Private identity agreement for private set functionalities

Private set intersection and related functionalities are among the most prominent real-world applications of secure multiparty computation. While such protocols have attracted significant attention from the research community, other functionalities are often required to support a PSI application in practice. For example, in order for two parties to run a PSI over the unique users contained in their databases, they might first invoke a support functionality to agree on the primary keys to represent their users. This paper studies a secure approach to agreeing on primary keys. We introduce and realize a functionality that computes a common set of identifiers based on incomplete information held by two parties, which we refer to as private identity agreement, and we prove the security of our protocol in the honest-but-curious model. We explain the subtleties in designing such a functionality that arise from privacy requirements when intending to compose securely with PSI protocols. We also argue that the cost of invoking this functionality can be amortized over a large number of PSI sessions, and that for applications that require many repeated PSI executions, this represents an improvement over a PSI protocol that directly uses incomplete or fuzzy matches.

Reading the Biopic through Persona: A Comparison between "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Rocketman"

Personas are the public expressions of a private identity, the performance of personality in the social world. They are particularly visible and familiar in the world of celebrity, where entertainers regularly adopt an alter-ego for performance. This has intriguing consequences for biographical representations of performers. Biopic actors are obliged to duplicate the public-facing persona, which is an already-known, semi-fictional construction, and the private individual beneath. The narrative of the biopic must account for this relationship between the persona and the person who authors it. This article explores this process in two high-profile rock biopics, Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) and Rocketman (2019), comparing their different approaches to reproducing and exploring the persona of their subjects in performance, style and mise en scène.

Rawls’ Liberal Right Hegelianism

This chapter argues that Rawls is a vitally important theorist of reconciliation: he maintains that autonomy is a matter of coming to find that one’s needs and values are reflected in the laws citizens are subject to. It shows how A Theory of Justice employs an account of moral psychology to posit a relationship between individual and society that is actually more harmonious than what Hegel has in mind. It then demonstrates that, by abandoning crucial elements of this moral psychology, Rawls’ account of autonomy comes closer to Hegel’s idea of reconciliation, but by doing so, he is compelled to lean heavily on the publicity that law provides in order to make the prospect of mediation between private identity and the public conception of justice credible. As such, Rawls tends to have a one-sided, overly affirmative conception of social institutions as repositories of value and principle.

Syphilis and Sociability

This essay considers the stain on one’s position within civil society represented by venereal disease. Drawing on the diaries of Boswell – for whom regular doses of syphilis seem to have been regarded as an amatory hazard – and Neville, the essay explores the increasing prominence and importance of the sphere of sociable intercourse in the eighteenth century, which necessitates, for Boswell at least, a clear division between his private selfhood and conduct and his public demeanour. In contrast, Neville’s episodes of the pox seem to have exacerbated his incipient paranoia and annoyance with a world around him that refuses to acknowledge his gentlemanly qualities. Both men’s reaction to their condition as related through their diaries reveals for Leigh Wetherall-Dickson a shifting notion of private identity formed in response to the relatively new phenomenon of sociable intercourse.

From Contagious to Resilient and Beyond: A Periodization of Four Decades of Educational Research on LGBTQ Issues

This article presents a periodization of educational research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) issues between 1970 and 2010. Developed through a frame analysis of 105 educational research reports, the periodization maps ideological and chronological patterns in the conceptual frames of research on LGBTQ issues. Five paradigmatic frames for understanding LGBTQ issues in education are discussed: (a) homosexuality as a social contagion; (b) homosexuality as a private identity; (c) LGB youth as “at-risk”; (d) LGBTQ youth as victims; and (f) LGBTQ youth as resilient. The author calls for an expansion beyond individual-level analyses into investigations of educational practice.

James Bond and the Art of Eating Eggs

James Bond eats a significant quantity of eggs in the Ian Fleming novels. In contrast to his popular, decadent image, the food consumption that provides Bond with a private identity is simple, everyday food, such as eggs, which underscore his qualities as an English Everyman, who shares the food habits of his post-war British audience, but does so with style and connoisseurship. Eggs possess further symbolic resonances for Bond's character. In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, eggs underscore his essential solitary individuality, but also his potential to act as a binding agent on behalf of British society. In Thunderball, in their less than healthy aspects, eggs represent the lure of forbidden food, underscoring Bond's machismo as a lover of food and women.