Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau
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Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau
#2We can make them more accurate by leveraging ICE going door to door.
Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau
#3Frankly i see no reason to keep this data private. They should simply publish a full dataset of the census, with no such data coarsening/differential privacy/ etc...
Fundamentally this is public data. If it's to dangerous to make public, it's too dangerous to collect, and people should be aware of exactly what it is.
There are very few things that the state has data on that should not be made public. Census data is simply not one of those things.
publishing should be the default for any data, and to keep it unpublished should require substantially good reasons that impact the country as a whole. Frankly, if it isn't detailed national defence plans, i struggle to see any data that should not be public.
Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau
#4There will be a bunch of people that start off with the premise that this data should be private and make following arguments based on this premise.
So I'll just go ahead and ask, give me good reasons why this data should be private?
My guess is that most of you think we should be counting illegals because they should have representation. And I reject that
Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau
#5The dueling political demands of accuracy and privacy are simply incompatible at some level. After reading this, maybe Hanlon's Razor isn't the right standard. Besides malice and stupidity, there is impossibility. Some problems just aren't solvable under certain constraints. I don't envy the statisticians tasked with finding a politically palatable solution to a math problem.
Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau
#6Frankly i see no reason to keep this data private. They should simply publish a full dataset of the census, with no such data coarsening/differential privacy/ etc... Fundamentally this is public data. If it's to dangerous to make public, it's too dangerous to collect, and people should be aware of exactly what it is. There are very few things that the state has data on that should not be made public. Census data is s…
How hard have you thought about this?
The biggest challenge with running a census is getting people to trust you enough to answer your questions.
A lot of census questions are sensitive. The ACS covers topics like citizenship status, disabilities, income, SNAP assistance, languages spoken at home.
If you want accurate information about the people who live in your country you need the census process to feel as safe for people to respond to as possible.
Are you saying the census shouldn't collect any data that people wouldn't be comfortable publishing? Because that's a recipe for a census that is far less useful for helping the country make useful decisions.
Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau
#7Frankly i see no reason to keep this data private. They should simply publish a full dataset of the census, with no such data coarsening/differential privacy/ etc... Fundamentally this is public data. If it's to dangerous to make public, it's too dangerous to collect, and people should be aware of exactly what it is. There are very few things that the state has data on that should not be made public. Census data is s…
That's a good default position, and I think should be our starting point.
But the devil is in the details. If we don't want advertisers constructing semi-complete profiles from simple web interactions then why would we publish 330 million census questionnaires for their use?
Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau
#8This is a gift to reactionary gerrymandering and voting restriction efforts, along with things like yesterday's FBI raid of an Ohio voting rights organization.
https://www.statenews.org/government-politics/2026-06-12/ohi...
Representative Joyce Beatty is from Ohio and was instrumental in stopping Trump from illegally renaming the Kennedy Center.
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/06/kennedy-center-b...
Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau
#9There will be a bunch of people that start off with the premise that this data should be private and make following arguments based on this premise. So I'll just go ahead and ask, give me good reasons why this data should be private? My guess is that most of you think we should be counting illegals because they should have representation. And I reject that
How about we should be "counting illegals" so that we know how many of them there are?
(Do you reject that? As someone who uses the phrase "counting illegals" I imagine you would be interested in knowing what that number is.)
Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau
#10Frankly i see no reason to keep this data private. They should simply publish a full dataset of the census, with no such data coarsening/differential privacy/ etc... Fundamentally this is public data. If it's to dangerous to make public, it's too dangerous to collect, and people should be aware of exactly what it is. There are very few things that the state has data on that should not be made public. Census data is s…
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