Using privacy policies for differential privacy¶

This topic describes how a data provider uses privacy policies to implement differential privacy.

About privacy policies¶

With differential privacy, Snowflake must check each query to determine whether it will exceed the privacy budget associated with the user executing the query. Privacy policies make that possible. A data provider creates a privacy policy that associates users with privacy budgets, and then assigns that policy to tables and views to make them privacy-protected.

When an analyst executes a query against a table with a privacy policy, Snowflake evaluates the body of the policy and does one of the following:

If the policy associates the user with a privacy budget, Snowflake makes sure that the privacy loss incurred by the query does not exceed that privacy budget. If the query is executed successfully, Snowflake adds the privacy loss incurred by the query to the cumulative privacy loss for the user so that subsequent queries don’t exceed the privacy budget.
If the policy indicates that the user can query the table without restriction, then the results don’t contain noise, and Snowflake does not track the privacy loss incurred by the query.

Privacy policy best practices¶

You can create a single privacy policy to protect a single entity, and then assign the privacy policy to all tables and views that contain information for that entity. This groups all privacy budgets for that entity under one privacy policy. You don’t need to create separate privacy policies for every table and view.

Working with privacy policies¶

Implementing differential privacy for a schema is a three-step process:

Create a privacy policy that associates privacy budgets with users based on conditions like name, role, or account.
Assign that privacy policy to a table or view to ensure that a query or set of queries against the data don’t exceed the privacy budget associated with the user who is executing the query.
Grant SELECT privileges on the privacy-protected data. Don’t grant privileges before assigning a privacy policy to the table or view because the analyst would have full access to the data.

As you manage your differential privacy environment, you can also:

Modify an existing privacy policy.
Replace a privacy policy that is currently assigned to a table or view with another policy.
Detach a privacy policy from a table or view.

Create a privacy policy¶

The most basic syntax for creating a new privacy policy is:

CREATE PRIVACY POLICY  <name>
  AS ( ) RETURNS PRIVACY_BUDGET -> <body>

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Where:

name is the name of the privacy policy.
AS ( ) RETURNS PRIVACY_BUDGET is the signature and return type of the policy. The signature doesn’t accept any arguments and the return type is PRIVACY_BUDGET, which is an internal data type. All privacy policies have the same signature and return type.
body is a SQL expression that determines whether the privacy policy returns a privacy budget, and if it does, which one.

The SQL expression of the body calls two functions to control the return value of the policy:

NO_PRIVACY_POLICY
Use the body’s expression to call the NO_PRIVACY_POLICY function when you want a query to have unrestricted access to the table or view to which the privacy policy is assigned.

PRIVACY_BUDGET
Use the body’s expression to call the PRIVACY_BUDGET function when you want to return a privacy budget from the policy.

For the complete syntax for the NO_PRIVACY_POLICY and PRIVACY_BUDGET functions, see CREATE PRIVACY POLICY.

Example privacy policies¶

Single privacy budget without conditions

Create a privacy policy my_priv_policy that always returns a privacy budget named analysts:

CREATE PRIVACY POLICY my_priv_policy
  AS ( ) RETURNS PRIVACY_BUDGET ->
  PRIVACY_BUDGET(BUDGET_NAME=> 'analysts');

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Conditional privacy policy

Create a privacy policy my_priv_policy that gives admin unrestricted access to the privacy-protected table or view while associating all other users with the privacy budget analysts:

CREATE PRIVACY POLICY my_priv_policy
  AS () RETURNS PRIVACY_BUDGET ->
    CASE
      WHEN CURRENT_USER() = 'ADMIN'
        THEN NO_PRIVACY_POLICY()
      ELSE PRIVACY_BUDGET(BUDGET_NAME => 'analysts')
    END;

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Conditional privacy policy for cross-account sharing

Create a privacy policy my_priv_policy that does the following:

Gives admin unrestricted access to the privacy-protected table or view.
Associates the privacy budget analysts to users in the same account.
Names the privacy budget associated with external account users so it can be easily identified. Privacy budgets are automatically namespaced to a specific external account, but using a descriptive naming scheme can help manage the privacy budgets.

CREATE PRIVACY POLICY my_priv_policy
  AS () RETURNS PRIVACY_BUDGET ->
    CASE
      WHEN CURRENT_USER() = 'ADMIN'
        THEN NO_PRIVACY_POLICY()
      WHEN CURRENT_ACCOUNT() = 'YE74187'
        THEN PRIVACY_BUDGET(BUDGET_NAME => 'analysts')
      ELSE PRIVACY_BUDGET(BUDGET_NAME => 'external.' || CURRENT_ACCOUNT())
    END;

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Using context functions in the policy body¶

You can include context functions in the body of a privacy policy so its behavior depends on the context in which the differentially private query is executed.

You can use the following context functions in the body of a privacy policy:

Context function	Description
CURRENT_ACCOUNT	Returns the account locator in use for the user’s current session.
CURRENT_DATABASE	Returns the database that contains the table that is protected by the privacy policy.
CURRENT_ORGANIZATION_NAME	Returns the name of the organization in use for user’s the current session.
CURRENT_ROLE	Returns the name of the role in use for the current session.
CURRENT_SCHEMA	Returns the schema that contains the table that is protected by the privacy policy.
CURRENT_USER	Returns the name of the user executing the query.
INVOKER_ROLE	Returns the name of the executing role.
INVOKER_SHARE	Returns the name of the share that directly accessed the table or view where the INVOKER_SHARE function is invoked.

Tip

Context functions like CURRENT_USER return strings, so comparisons using them are case-sensitive. You can use LOWER to convert strings to all lowercase if you’d like to do a case-insensitive comparison.

Modify a privacy policy¶

Use the ALTER PRIVACY POLICY command to modify a privacy policy. You can rename the policy, change its body, or modify a comment.

For example, to replace the existing body of a privacy policy my_priv_policy with a new body that always returns a budget external_analysts, execute:

ALTER PRIVACY POLICY my_priv_policy SET BODY ->
  PRIVACY_BUDGET(BUDGET_NAME => 'external_analysts');

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Assign a privacy policy¶

A privacy policy can be applied to one or more tables or views to protect them with differential privacy. A table or view can have only one privacy policy assigned to it.

Use the ADD PRIVACY POLICY clause of an ALTER TABLE or ALTER VIEW command to assign a privacy policy to the table or view. The syntax is:

ALTER { TABLE | [ MATERIALIZED ] VIEW } <name>
  ADD PRIVACY POLICY <policy_name>
  { NO ENTITY KEY | ENTITY KEY ( <column_name> ) }

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Where:

name specifies the name of the table or view.
policy_name specifies the name of the privacy policy.
column_name specifies the entity key for the table or view. The entity key is a column that uniquely identifies an entity within the table or view.

In most cases, you’ll want to define an entity key in order to implement entity-level privacy, though you can use the NO ENTITY KEY clause to protect individual rows without considering whether data belonging to an entity could exist in multiple rows. For more information, see About entity-level privacy.

For example, to assign the policy my_priv_policy to the table t1 where the entity key is the email column, execute:

ALTER TABLE t1 ADD PRIVACY POLICY my_priv_policy ENTITY KEY (email);

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Replace a privacy policy or entity key¶

The recommended method of replacing a privacy policy or entity key is to use both the ADD and DROP clauses in the same ALTER TABLE or ALTER VIEW command. This allows you to atomically make the change because both operations take place in the same transaction, leaving no gap in protection.

To keep the same policy but change the entity key, you need to drop the policy, then add it again with the new entity key.

For example, to assign a new privacy policy to a table that is already protected by a privacy policy:

ALTER TABLE finance.accounting.customers
  DROP PRIVACY POLICY priv_policy_1,
  ADD PRIVACY POLICY priv_policy_2 ENTITY KEY (email);

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You can also detach the privacy policy from a table or view in one statement and then set a new policy on the table or view in a different statement. If you choose this method, the table is not protected by a privacy policy in between detaching one policy and assigning another. A query could potentially access sensitive data during this time if the users still have SELECT privileges on the data.

Detach a privacy policy¶

Use the DROP PRIVACY POLICY clause of an ALTER TABLE or ALTER VIEW command to detach a privacy policy from a table or view. After executing this command, the table or view is no longer privacy-protected. The syntax is:

ALTER { TABLE | [ MATERIALIZED ] VIEW } <name> DROP PRIVACY POLICY <policy_name>

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Where:

name specifies the name of the table or view.
policy_name specifies the name of the privacy policy.

For example, to detach the privacy policy my_priv_policy from the finance.accounting.customers table:

ALTER TABLE finance.accounting.customers
  DROP PRIVACY POLICY my_priv_policy;

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Monitor privacy policies¶

To help monitor the use of privacy policies, you can list all of the privacy policies in your account, determine which tables and views are protected by a particular privacy policy, or list all policies currently assigned to a table or view.

List all privacy policies¶

You can use the PRIVACY_POLICIES view in the Account Usage schema of the shared SNOWFLAKE database. This view is a catalog for all privacy policies in your Snowflake account. For example:

SELECT * FROM SNOWFLAKE.ACCOUNT_USAGE.PRIVACY_POLICIES
  ORDER BY POLICY_NAME;

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Identify privacy policy references¶

The POLICY_REFERENCES Information Schema table function can identify which tables and views are protected by privacy policies. There are two different syntax options:

Return a row for each object (that is, table or view) that has the specified privacy policy set on it:

USE DATABASE my_db;
USE SCHEMA information_schema;
SELECT policy_name,
       policy_kind,
       ref_entity_name,
       ref_entity_domain,
       ref_column_name,
       ref_arg_column_names,
       policy_status
FROM TABLE(information_schema.policy_references(policy_name => 'my_db.my_schema.privpolicy'));

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Return a row for each policy assigned to the table named my_table. Use the POLICY_KIND column to identify which policies are privacy policies.

USE DATABASE my_db;
USE SCHEMA information_schema;
SELECT policy_name,
       policy_kind,
       ref_entity_name,
       ref_entity_domain,
       ref_column_name,
       ref_arg_column_names,
       policy_status
FROM TABLE(information_schema.policy_references(ref_entity_name => 'my_db.my_schema.my_table', ref_entity_domain => 'table'));

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Privileges and commands¶

The following subsections provide information to help manage privacy policies.

Privacy policy privileges¶

Snowflake supports the following privileges on the privacy policy object.

Note that operating on any object in a schema also requires the USAGE privilege on the parent database and schema.

Privilege	Usage
APPLY	Lets you assign a privacy policy to, or detach a privacy policy from, a table or view.
OWNERSHIP	Required to alter most properties of a privacy policy. Ownership of the privacy policy can be transferred, which grants full control over the privacy policy.

Privacy policy DDL reference¶

Snowflake supports the following DDL to create and manage privacy policies.

Summary of DDL commands, operations, and privileges¶

The following table summarizes the relationship between privacy policy privileges and DDL operations.

Note that operating on any object in a schema also requires the USAGE privilege on the parent database and schema.

Operation	Privilege required
Create privacy policy	A role with the CREATE PRIVACY POLICY privilege in the same schema.
Alter privacy policy	The role with the OWNERSHIP privilege on the privacy policy.
Describe privacy policy	One of the following: A role with the global APPLY PRIVACY POLICY privilege. A role with the OWNERSHIP privilege on the privacy policy. A role with the APPLY privilege on the privacy policy.
Drop privacy policy.	A role with the OWNERSHIP privilege on the privacy policy.
Show privacy policies.	One of the following: A role with the USAGE privilege on the schema in which the privacy policy exists. A role with the APPLY PRIVACY POLICY on the account.
Assign a privacy policy to, or detach a privacy policy from, a table or view.	One of the following: A role with the APPLY PRIVACY POLICY privilege on the account. A role with the APPLY privilege on the privacy policy and the OWNERSHIP privilege on the table or view.