English

A Simple Differentially Private Algorithm for Global Minimum Cut

Data Structures and Algorithms 2022-08-24 v2 Cryptography and Security

Abstract

In this note, we present a simple differentially private algorithm for the global minimum cut problem using only one call to the exponential mechanism. This problem was first studied by Gupta et al. [2010], and they gave a differentially private algorithm with near-optimal utility guarantees. We improve upon their work in many aspects: our algorithm is simpler, more natural, and more efficient than the one given in Gupta et al. [2010], and furthermore provides slightly better privacy and utility guarantees.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2208.09365,
  title  = {A Simple Differentially Private Algorithm for Global Minimum Cut},
  author = {George Z. Li},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.09365},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

There is an error in the privacy argument. The algorithm only outputs t such that the minimum s-t cut (S_t,V-S_t) gives an O(log n/eps) approximation. There is currently no way to privately compute min s-t cut, so this doesn't do anything

R2 v1 2026-06-25T01:49:25.106Z