[derefr]

I mean, yes, there's no service where the security/privacy is contractual, that is safe from the state overriding the contract.

But the promise of things like homeomorphic encryption, is that you can do a computation on a truly untrusted substrate, i.e. you can trust computations performed by an untrusted adversary, and also know that they didn't learn anything about those computations. It's a technical solution to security/privacy, not a contractual one.

The ideal that everyone's hoping for, is that there's a way to get that same kind of technical guarantee from cloud compute providers, without needing a layer of maths that makes Monte Carlo quantum simulation look fast.

[Spooky23]

All commercial activities are at the core protected by contractural protections and good faith. Cloud is not as different as you may think.

Any other expectation of protection from the state are a limited based on probability, seriousness of the matter, and your potential culpability. Your employees, service providers and others can be required to provide information without informing you. In extreme cases, agents will pose as utility, security or building management.

[derefr]

> Your employees, service providers and others can be required to provide information without informing you. In extreme cases, agents will pose as utility, security or building management.

...and homeomorphic encryption would stop all of those attacks. Presuming it's a homeomorphically-encrypted substrate for an autonomous agent, making its own "evaluations" of the data it can perceive from the outside world (ala a smart contract with access to an oracle) rather than simply trusting data from the insecure domain that happens to be signed with the right key.

This is also, y'know, the security architecture that allows nuclear submarines to avoid being subverted by an enemy nation that has temporarily gained control of the White House. The sub's commander needs to know not only that they've received the order, but also that the world really looks like one where such an order would be legitimately given. The isolated secure agent, speaking to an insecure principal, needs not only proof of their credentials, but also needs to independently verify their claims about the state of the world. (And, if they can do that, the system is often architected such that the principal won't even communicate in the moment, but instead has just left flowchart-like orders in advance, involving various dead-man's-switch timers and so forth.)

[Spooky23]

> ...and homeomorphic encryption would stop all of those attacks.

It may, but how many business processes are as well thought out as nuclear missile submarines?