Privacy-preserving Approaches to Transparency Logs
summary
Explains why Merkle trees, inclusion and consistency proofs, and witness gossiping stop simple deletion: removing leaves or recalculating parents breaks cryptographic consistency or auditability. Gives concrete examples—certificate transparency and binary transparency used by Sigstore—and shows destructive redaction fails, prevention only reduces mistakes, and front-end blocking still leaves mirrors with PII. Recommends the practical solution of keeping cryptographic roots in the log but storing PII off-chain in a content-addressable store so redaction deletes the payload while proofs remain valid.
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chapters (21)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:51Hash Functions
- 5:04Merkle Trees - Inclusion
- 10:14Transparency Logs - Consistency
- 13:26Witnessing - Split View Attack
- 13:55Witnessing - Gossiping
- 15:35Monitoring
- 16:10Certificate Transparency
- 19:28Binary Transparency - Sigstore
- 21:46Key Transparency
- 23:19Goals of Privacy Law
- 25:14Transparency Logs & Privacy
- 26:45Guiding principles
- 27:21Destructive - Deleting entries from log
- 28:15Destructive - Removing log
- 29:00Prevent - Appropriate checks
- 29:59Prevent - Pseudonymity
- 31:14Log Frontend Blocks Requests
- 32:26Move Sensitive Data Out of Log
- 33:48Keep Log Operator Accountable
- 34:21Conclusion
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