Fast Private Location-based Information Retrieval Over the Torus

Location-based services offer immense utility, but also pose significant privacy risks. In response, we propose LocPIR, a novel framework using homomorphic encryption (HE), specifically the TFHE scheme, to preserve user location privacy when retrieving data from public clouds. Our system employs TFHE's expertise in non-polynomial evaluations, crucial for comparison operations. LocPIR showcases minimal client-server interaction, reduced memory overhead, and efficient throughput. Performance tests confirm its computational speed, making it a viable solution for practical scenarios, demonstrated via application to a COVID-19 alert model. Thus, LocPIR effectively addresses privacy concerns in location-based services, enabling secure data sharing from the public cloud.