Fundamental Limits of Obfuscation for Linear Gaussian Dynamical Systems: An Information-Theoretic Approach

Abstract: In this paper, we study the fundamental limits of obfuscation in terms of privacy-distortion tradeoffs for linear Gaussian dynamical systems via an information-theoretic approach. Particularly, we obtain analytical formulas that capture the fundamental privacy-distortion tradeoffs when privacy masks are to be added to the outputs of the dynamical systems, while indicating explicitly how to design the privacy masks in an optimal way: The privacy masks should be colored Gaussian with power spectra shaped specifically based upon the system and noise properties.