The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has published a technological analysis on secure multiparty computation (SMC), a cryptographic technique enabling collaboration on data without revealing its content.

This method, considered a privacy-enhancing technology (PET), allows multiple organizations to compute common results from their respective data sets while preserving the confidentiality of individual information. It thus promotes the principles of data minimization and privacy by design by avoiding direct sharing or centralization of raw data. However, the EDPS emphasizes that the use of SMC does not render data anonymous and does not exempt data controllers from their obligations under the GDPR. Any processing of personal data through this technology remains subject to the requirements of lawfulness, purpose limitation, security, and respect for the rights of data subjects.

The analysis presents concrete use cases, such as the European JOCONDE project led by Eurostat. This project studies the feasibility of producing official statistics collaboratively between countries without sharing underlying data. The objective is to establish the technical, legal, and organizational conditions for such an approach in the public sector. Other potential applications are also mentioned, notably in the field of money laundering detection.