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If person 1 doesn't tell the group if they're adding their salary at the beginning or at the end, it would provide a little more security between person 1 and 2.

i.e. If the minimum rand # is known to be 100,000, and person 2 receives the number 150,000 and knows it includes the salary of person 1...they will know person 1 makes <= 50k



Yeah, you can make this a lot better by just making the random number in the range 1 billion - 1 trillion.


No. If the first person writes 1000050000 then the second person knows that the first earns <= 50k. Same problem at the other end of the interval.


Right, but the chance of this happening is a lot smaller.

Actually, I should have realized, what one should do is draw a random Gaussian (or Laplace) with very large variance -- see "differential privacy".


If the first person doesn’t add their number, then the 3rd person has the same “visibility” into the second person’s number, based on the minimum rand.

The solution can be to include negative numbers in the RNG range, or keep the RNG range a secret (except to person 1).


The 1st person wouldn't tell anyone if they added it initially or not.

Anyways, isn't it possible to add and divide encrypted numbers? Couldn't we just do some variation of this?




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