Revisiting Privacy Amplification by Subsampling in Selective Release DPSGD

Abstract:Machine learning's reliance on sensitive data necessitates privacy-preserving techniques like Differentially Private Stochastic Gradient Descent (DPSGD). However, DPSGD suffers from substantial utility degradation and slow convergence due to gradient clipping and noise injection. Prior works have attempted to improve DPSGD from various perspectives; notably, the Differentially Private Selective Update and Release (DPSUR) algorithm has achieved remarkable model utility. However, the privacy accounting in DPSUR overlooks the variation in sampling probability introduced by the selective release mechanism, which compromises the rigor of its privacy guarantees. To address these limitations, we re-evaluate the privacy analysis of the selective release mechanism and propose a novel algorithm: Differentially Private Selective Release based on Clipped Gradients (DPSR-CG). Through a rigorous, newly derived privacy analysis and extensive experiments on multiple datasets (MNIST, CIFAR-10, IMDB, and FMNIST), we demonstrate that our DPSR-CG mechanism maintains strict privacy guarantees while achieving exceptional model performance.

Machine Learning (cs.LG); Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); Machine Learning (stat.ML)

arXiv:2606.04384 [cs.LG]

(or arXiv:2606.04384v1 [cs.LG] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.04384 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.