US Patent 9710672 System for and method of controllably disclosing sensitive data

System and method of producing a collection of possibilities that agree on information that must be disclosed (disclosable information) and disagree with a sufficient degree of diversity as defined by a policy to protect the sensitive information. A policy defines: what information is possible, what information the recipient would believe, what information is sensitive (to protect), what information is disclosable (to share) and sufficiency conditions that specify the degree of ambiguity required to consider the sensitive information protected. A formalism is utilized that provably achieves these goals for a variety of structured datasets including tabular data such as spreadsheets or databases as well as annotated graphs. The formalism includes the ability to generate a certificate that proves a disclosure adheres to a policy. This certificate is produced either as part of the protection process or separately using an altered process.