IBM to Provide Security w/o Sacrificing Privacy Using Hash Functions

[Florian Weimer]

* Sean C.:

> The I.B.M. software would convert data on a person into a string of seemingly
> random characters, using a technique known as a one-way hash function. No
> names, addresses or Social Security numbers, for example, would be embedded
> within the character string.

For most applications, this is just a speed bump because the search
space is rather small.  It's even worse for the no-fly list because
you have to apply some data reduction first (think SOUNDEX): a lot of
the names on them have varying transliteration.