The response "sensitive value; response suppressed" is itself a disclosure. Suggest a manner in which a database management system could suppress responses that reveal sensitive information without disclosing that the responses to certain queries are sensitive

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Random
data
suppression
can
be
applied
to
queries.
The
database
management
system
could
periodically
suppress
the
response
to
a
particular
query
that
was
not
sensitive.
Then,
when
a
user
received
information
that
a
response
had
been
suppressed,
the
user
would
not
know
if
it
was
because
of
random
suppression
or
sensitive
data.
This
approach
fails,
however,
if
the
user
submits
the
same
query
several
times
and
the
result
is
always
suppressed.
If
the
system
practices
random
suppression,
it
must
always
suppress
the
results
of
the
same
query
in
order
not
to
reveal
whether
the
suppression
is
because
the
result
is
sensitive
or
because
this
is
a
random
suppression.
Note
that
the
user
can
submit
the
query
in
several
forms
or
submit
partial
queries
that
can
be
combined
separately
to
obtain
the
desired
answer.
Thus,
the
tracking
of
what
query
responses
have
been
suppressed
is
not
as
simple
as
recording
syntactically
which
query
results
have
been
suppressed.