Non-interactive Zero-Sharing with Applications to Private Distributed Decision Making

We employ the new primitive of non-interactive zero-sharing to realize efficiently and privately various “distributed decision making” procedures. Our methodology emphasizes non-interactiveness and universal verifiability. Non-interactiveness suggests that there is no bilateral communication between the active participants; instead decision making is achieved by unilateral communication between active participants and a security-wise non-trusted server that participates faithfully in the protocol. Universal verifiability suggests that the participants’ actions produce a public audit trail ensuring publicly that they have followed the protocol’s specifications. Based on non-interactive zero-sharing, we present constructions for a private veto protocol, a protocol for simultaneous disclosure of information and a privacy-enhancing “plug-in” tool for electronic voting that can be incorporated in homomorphic-encryption based schemes.