FHE is semantically secure against chosen plaintext attacks. (The gentry latice scheme paper claims it is semantically secure against chosen plaintext attacks [1])

If i understand that correctly, it means that when you encrypt a value, you always get a different value, even if the plaintext is the same.

So how would the attacker observe that value 7 and 12 are the same without decrypting the value?

[1] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

P.s. are you maybe confusing FHE with deterministic encryption or order-preserving-encryption which is sometimes used in "encrypted" (scare quotes because they're pretty bad) db products that still want to allow queries on encrypted data. That's a totally different thing with much much weaker security garuntees.

Honestly, I don't understand how you can get downvoted for this answer. The GP should be downvoted in oblivion, because it obviously doesn't know what it's talking about, yet you are the greyed one…

If people don't believe the parent post and would like to see a visual “proof” of it, here is the (abbreviated) ciphertext for same value (`true`) encrypted by [TFHE](https://github.com/tfhe/tfhe), note how these aren't the same:

{ coefficients: [-224220402, 1267713220, 372943361, 263858338, -370546283, -605917751, -1924979310, -1572775794, 1846572795, -468768480, -290510339, -915978400, -1364310315, 809081884, -1495989601, -331539817, -1453231071, 404566454, 495420049, -879411073, 830751792, -517575314, 1556751889, 443973073, 1944290005, 674176195, -2141487034, -317403947, -460501881, -530948496, -1701307365, -1131020764, -951177975, 185735343, -607301526, -1413023671, -927580822, -1519370777, -867508577, 1783197541, -1563558893, 1077184331, 1711379115, 1493923712, 1553459001, -1181497038, 2076454627, 2090667603, -1811778643, -1964586812, -1514194032, 1847333213, -29937879, 1408366270, -246399878, -2100573013, 143332974, 355615400, -1746332080, 1803753774, 1010929751, -178538162, 2019489654, -1762380579, 1676883032, 855666812, 2078455615, 1070127391, -310916718, 1972027124, 1145751265, 1391734199, …], b: -362940425, current_variance: 0.0000000009313225746154785 }

{ coefficients: [-297806840, -994586634, 304850282, 863793687, 1840210042, -1105546555, -1110462781, 858561202, 1572862702, -1414807433, 925868178, -2022139768, 1977503124, -1355884545, 252233845, -607580470, -1640661899, 184197878, 175367248, -1883040938, -1452285303, 2135910408, 1848643984, 277669753, 1205220991, -1010438927, 344717140, -616704798, 617000592, -706461456, -1674056437, -1108542319, 1209547087, -1275731206, -1050202170, 1804450949, -212790115, 1603633119, 1581631548, 891985869, -767711288, 1662132229, -488697271, 1729020643, 68369628, 594815617, -697565685, -1119636178, -1069556471, 668091191, 2058655289, -965364559, -428300746, 1288771675, -1291673545, -1936980021, 1344393745, -566147990, -2017181358, -876369855, 1202714564, 279954504, 1954812679, -121935512, 1508624251, 1746889815, 10036320, -694130814, 1749036054, -350031511, 856310504, -486108325, 447226889, -108777191, 1323665880, 819541960, 441166350, -934866202, 837730330, 281902593, -1870154550, 963192542, 649262920, -2012432624, 1553637232, 627237492, 616166507, 781074188, 44864017, -1911286875, -1429302424, -1054092570, -1620457762, 641734226, 1629006914, 1365659737, 360668934, -874923908, …], b: 27536240, current_variance: 0.0000000009313225746154785 }

That's partially what random filler values are for.

Also, aren't there FHE algorithms or potential constructs for encrypting blocks of data using the index as part of a shared secret?

Would it be possible to add random low order bits to prevent that? E.g instead of doing 7 * 9 you do 7.00024378 * 9.00003891

FHE involves adding random noise pretty constantly (FHE kind of works by adding noise at every step, and regulary does a magic encrypted re-encryption step where during evaluation the intermediate values are reencrypted without ever revealing the original value, to get rid of the excess noise).

Anyways, FHE is secure against (non-adaptive) chosen plaintext attacks. That among other things means that if E is the encryption function, E(7) != E(7), and if you have E(x) and E(y) you cant tell if x and y are related to each other unless you have access to the decryption function.