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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

#91

Post by Supermancho »

r14c wrote: post #73
notfromhere wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress passed laws that blocked the federal government from fusing data across departments for this specific reason. the admin decided to ignore those, and a friendly congress is deciding to not act on that. You really, really don't want a government who can build a unified profile on you in that way.

Isn't the issue here the lack of accountability? Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I don't think its a foregone conclusion that governments are fundamentally corrupt. Ours certainly is and we have a very weak constitution which makes it worse, but that's the US . I think better constitutions are possible, but we have to stop treating it like a sacred document and be practical.

> I don't think its a foregone conclusion that governments are fundamentally corrupt

There's a question of what you mean. Is it, can they be corrupt? have they been corrupt? are they currently corrupt (because of the previous, or incidentally)?

Plato thought Democracy was corrupt and it's the least inherently corrupt system I know of. I would say they are fundamentally corrupt. The best you can do is try to limit it with a document (like the US Constitution) and setting up a multi-branch power structure capable of adversarial action. As you point out, the US does not have that and it's showing.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#92

Post by Bratmon »

arjie wrote: post #74

Pretty sad, in my opinion. In my ideal the state should have visibility into the shape of the people present so that we can make good decisions about our combined organization. I think we’re making a mistake we will come to regret by intentionally damaging our data collection infrastructure. I think a large amount of the US’s success is the result of good institutions handling granular data. Policies can be adjusted…

But this article is about a decision to damage the census less. If you value an accurate census, you should be celebrating!

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#93

Post by watwut »

throwawa1 wrote: post #77
bagels wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Government is the entity that weaponizes the data. The most obvious example is the Census Bureau compiling lists of people of Japanese descent to imprison during WWII. That's just the most obvious one that I know of without looking up more. The real push for this now is to form lists of people to disenfranchise.

[flagged]

1.) Migration is constant and big topic.

2.) Democracy happens to be destroyed by local far right movements, composed of people who were there for years and did not migrated anywhere.

The extend of foreign destruction is Vance trying to destroy democracy in Europe openly, Putin doing it secretly and Musk openly enciting pogroms. None of them immigrated to EU.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#94

Post by Bratmon »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #50

Coming from a certain european country, you never know what answer on the census might get you into trouble. "What is your religious affiliation". Seems perfectly innocuous, but turned out to be retroactively fatal if your answer could be attributed to you by a certain foreign occupier in the 1940s .

Surely any such foreign occupier would just demand the unredacted data?

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#95

Post by nojito »

wpollock wrote: post #64
simonw wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

> 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. I'll say that. The state representatives should provide congress and the president any data needed to inform policy decisions about the people they represent. And as others have pointed out, other departments…

>And as others have pointed out, other departments and agencies (such as the IRS) have most of the rest of the data required to make policy decisions.

There are laws in place forbidding government agencies from merging together datasets.

The last thing people should support is creating of profiles of individuals by combining data from different government agencies. This is why the census is so important as a data collection mechanism.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#96

Post by iugtmkbdfil834 »

Can anyone explain to me the previous state and why it was desirable? I admittedly do not understand why people are getting riled up. I am not being difficult. I really don't understand the original state and the changed state here.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#97

Post by aesthesia »

bpt3 wrote: post #72
tbrownaw wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Replying to the ACS with accurate information is required by law, so they don't actually need to rely on people feeling safe to get answers. This works by the same principle as how nobody ever drives faster than the speed limit.

I don't understand your point here. Are you saying compliance isn't enforced? As someone who got an ACS survey not long ago and had no interest in completing it, it certainly appears to be.

They can certainly enforce that you answer the survey. But it's very difficult to enforce a requirement that people answer questions accurately, particularly when they perceive that doing so will expose them to danger.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#98

Post by nojito »

SoftTalker wrote: post #78
glitchc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't need to know the rest of it, or if we do, it should be surveyed separately with voluntary participation. But we do. A detailed census is essential for making good policy. For example, knowing the age and distribution of children across the country helps local and state governments decide where to put the next school or children's hospital. The federal govt. allocates funds for education and daycare accordi…

The risks of abuse are too high and historically proven to happen eventually. There are many other ways to determine where schools and hospitals are needed, such as aggregate enrollment and admission statistics.

>There are many other ways to determine where schools and hospitals are needed, such as aggregate enrollment and admission statistics.

You do realize there are places where there aren't schools or hospitals?

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#99

Post by cyanydeez »

asolove wrote: post #13

The replies here arguing we should publish it all are wild in the worst kind of first-order thinking way. It’s a census: it just asks questions. If you start publishing and weaponizing the data against people with various attributes, they’ll just lie or not answer. And then you are left with worse than nothing: bad data people try to act on.

have you not been paying attention for 10 years? At the top of the rotting snakehead they know all this, they arn't arguing in good faith.

Re: Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

#100

Post by LPisGood »

foolfoolz wrote: post #68

i have such a hard time reconciling stuff like this: > The census bureau decided to adopt differential privacy for the 2020 Census and: > The consequences will be dire for utility or for privacy, and possibly both. It's hard to understate this point: future statistical releases will either be useless compared to past ones, or they will be incredibly unsafe so we took the census for centuries before this point, and it…

The concerns here, like most concerns about privacy, are hyperbolic hypothetical hypochondria, until they’re not.
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