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Yesterday during the rollout of Android 12 Beta 5, we spotted an apparent rebranding for Google’s old device personalization services, using the new name Private Compute Core. The thing actually in that settings section has remained the same, however, and Google told us the name would be one thing when it announced beta 2. Now the company shares more of its plans and what precisely a “private compute core” means. “.
Apart from the new name, the Private Compute Core is meant to be an isolated environment in which some features can live that may infringe on your privacy. Essentially, a ton of the features we love – things like Live Caption, Now Playing, Smart Reply, and even your best soft keyboard suggestions – have to use your private data to work properly. They need to see what you type, hear what you hear, etc., and that’s a potential problem. How can you make sure the features respect your privacy? And even if you trust Google, do you trust everything between you and them? Well, now Google is making that isolation even clearer, and it is making the grandiose (albeit vague) promise that Private Compute Core’s features will keep your ostensibly isolated data private. entirely from the rest of the operating system in an indefinite way.
The private computing kernel in the settings on Android 12 beta 5.
However, even if you value your privacy (and you should), some of these features may be more improved offsite, with the help of the big cloud invading privacy, Google therefore also introduces a new private compute service to accompany the kernel which ensures that the features work on open source APIs, remove identifiable information and impose an improvement of confidentiality. technologies where possible such as Federated Learning and PIR protocols.
In short, the Private Compute Core isolates and manages the settings for features that may rely on more data than you realize, and the Private Compute Services ensure that specific standards for improving privacy are met for anything that needs to. be done out of the device.
Right now, the Private Compute Core only handles a handful of things (the ones I specifically mentioned above), but Google says it plans to add more with future versions of Android. . As part of the change, all of these existing features will also be publicly documented, and Google plans to release the source code for these features for review by the security community – a change that could seeing enthusiasts bring some of these on custom ROMs as well, as far as we know.
In short, the Private Compute Core is more than just a rebranding effort, although that’s what it mostly looks like from a user perspective when delving into the Settings menu. Customers using Android should see the real privacy benefits of regular third-party reviews of features and standards set for offsite computing. Privacy may not be sexy or easily marketable, but it matters more with each passing day and the growing interdependence between applications, services and sites, which surround us and exploit our data every day.
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