Privacy concerns are breaking the Census
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Privacy concerns are breaking the Census
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Re: Privacy concerns are breaking the Census
#2I have similar hesitations about registering to vote in my state (North Carolina) because it makes voter record data available to “Any person upon request and for a fee. Free lists are provided upon request to political parties.” [1]. My name, address, etc. ended up on dozens of sketchy websites after registering to vote previously. Privacy conscious legislation can’t come soon enough.
[1]: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/access...
Re: Privacy concerns are breaking the Census
#3I would certainly rather they erred on the side of privacy. If the data cannot be released without compromising privacy, I would rather it not be released at all.
Re: Privacy concerns are breaking the Census
#4I would certainly rather they erred on the side of privacy. If the data cannot be released without compromising privacy, I would rather it not be released at all.
The point is that there is no meaningful gain in privacy, and it comes at the cost of crippling important research.
Re: Privacy concerns are breaking the Census
#5First, the article would read much better without a pejorative outgroup reference of "weirdo living off the grid", especially in its opening paragraph!
In general we would have to be much less guarded about the collection of personal information if we had laws prohibiting its harmful use ala the GDPR. Presently, anything that is collected becomes fair game for the advertising-surveillance industry's monetization, manipulation, and indefinite storage. So an entity with a bona fide use for personal information (eg The Census) cannot be trusted because resisting collection of such data is currently the only way to prevent yourself from being abused. And while I agree practically the Census isn't really collecting much data that the surveillance industry doesn't already have, this dynamic still informs societal norms.
Re: Privacy concerns are breaking the Census
#6I hate the argument this blog uses. Just because your data is available and abused through websites A, B, and C doesn't mean you should add your private data to site D.
If I'm trying to avoid catching Covid-19 by limiting exposure but have to go the the grocery story, the doctors, and the gas station it doesn't mean I should also go to a music concert since I'm already unable to avoid exposure.
Re: Privacy concerns are breaking the Census
#7I would certainly rather they erred on the side of privacy. If the data cannot be released without compromising privacy, I would rather it not be released at all.
Definition of privacy derangement syndrome, right there.
This is superficial "privacy" which affords no marginal improvement in your actual privacy but does concretely break the Census.
Re: Privacy concerns are breaking the Census
#8Wow, if privacy is the concern then it makes a heck of a lot more sense not to publish fine grained data. Keep it at the tract level instead of block since those are more closely defined by the population size living in them-- usually a few thousand.
Giving purposely bad data is much worse than no data.
Re: Privacy concerns are breaking the Census
#9I have similar hesitations about registering to vote in my state (North Carolina) because it makes voter record data available to “Any person upon request and for a fee. Free lists are provided upon request to political parties.” [1]. My name, address, etc. ended up on dozens of sketchy websites after registering to vote previously. Privacy conscious legislation can’t come soon enough. [1]: https://www.ncsl.org/resea…
Heh if you think that's bad check out FL
Re: Privacy concerns are breaking the Census
#10>Private companies are already scrutinizing your purchase patterns to determine that you are pregnant and then potentially getting in hot water for notifying relatives you haven’t actually informed.
>Given that baseline reality, compromising the usefulness of Census data for the sake of minimal privacy gains seems really bad.
The difference is that you can opt out of various companies collecting data. Can you opt out of the census? With this sort of argument, you can basically justify any sort of government privacy intrusion because private companies are already doing it, so "compromising the usefulness of NSA surveillance data for the sake of minimal privacy gains seems really bad". You do want to stop terrorists and pedophiles, don't you?