Optimal Noise Adding Mechanisms for Approximate Differential Privacy

Abstract: We study the (nearly) optimal mechanisms in $(\epsilon,\delta)$-approximate differential privacy for integer-valued query functions and vector-valued (histogram-like) query functions under a utility-maximization/cost-minimization framework. We characterize the tradeoff between $\epsilon$ and $\delta$ in utility and privacy analysis for histogram-like query functions ($\ell<sup>1$ sensitivity), and show that the $(\epsilon,\delta)$-differential privacy is a framework not much more general than the $(\epsilon,0)$-differential privacy and $(0,\delta)$-differential privacy in the context of $\ell<sup>1$ and $\ell<sup>2$ cost functions, i.e., minimum expected noise magnitude and noise power. In the same context of $\ell<sup>1$ and $\ell<sup>2$ cost functions, we show the near-optimality of uniform noise mechanism and discrete Laplacian mechanism in the high privacy regime (as $(\epsilon,\delta) \to (0,0)$). We conclude that in $(\epsilon,\delta)$-differential privacy, the optimal noise magnitude and noise power are $\Theta(\min(\frac{1}{\epsilon},\frac{1}{\delta}))$ and $$\Theta(\min(\frac{1}{\epsilon<sup>2},\frac{1}{\delta<sup>2}))$$, respectively, in the high privacy regime.