Obtaining $(\epsilon,\delta)$-differential privacy guarantees when using a Poisson mechanism to synthesize contingency tables

Abstract

We show that differential privacy type guarantees can be obtained when using a Poisson synthesis mechanism to protect counts in contingency tables. Specifically, we show how to obtain $(\epsilon, \delta)$-probabilistic differential privacy guarantees via the Poisson distribution's cumulative distribution function. We demonstrate this empirically with the synthesis of an administrative-type confidential database.