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Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

desfontain.es

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

#461

Post by pandaman »

estearum wrote: post #427
pandaman wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feds made a nice write up for you, if you are actually curious: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/california-woman-federally-ch...

Okay so in this scenario, if this woman wanted to actually vote on behalf of these people, all she had to do was pay a bunch of people to register with her address, get 10, 30, 100, or 1000 ballots mailed to her address, then fill out all of those ballots and mail them in and hope no one noticed dozens or hundreds or thousands of ballots coming from an address that would clearly and directly implicate the person who…

>hope no one noticed dozens or hundreds or thousands of ballots coming from an address

So what? If it was illegal to register multiple voters at the same address then it could have been detected at the registration time.

>And the trade off here is this person gets 10, 30, 100, or 1000 votes in a single county and at the minuscule risk of the rest of her life in prison?

Did not you notice that this person has not been charged with voting with other people ballots (even though she was able and most likely did that) and only with paying to register? Such a charge would be very hard to stick.

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

#462

Post by kccqzy »

An earlier article on the same blog had some very useful information on how easily the aggregated census data from 2010 (before differential privacy) could be used to reconstruct real data for individuals: https://desfontain.es/blog/us-census-reconstruction-attack.h...

I am personally convinced that the reason noise infusion was banned was because powerful people were already reconstructing individual data from census for the purpose of gerrymandering, and they wanted to continue gerrymandering.

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

#463

Post by nullc »

Alive-in-2025 wrote: post #305
dnautics wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a significant movement in conservative circles that "the census should literally only be a count". this could be a wedge to prevent detailed demographic data collection by the government

If you don’t count people of different races, nationalities, origin, then you can pretend there are only white people. You don’t know if there are any marginalized people gathered in say an extremely poor neighborhood, because they are all people. I see it as a way to pretend there’s just white people.

Do you think the only, or even primary, thing that determines if a person is marginalized is the color of their skin? -- even taking that you're talking about a POOR neighborhood as a prior?

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

#464

Post by lesuorac »

roenxi wrote: post #455
clipsy wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise of the Republican party for half a century now has been: "The government can't do anything right, and if you elect us we'll prove it!"

And it's something of a coin flip whether people prefer that philosophy to the other mob. Trump has made it to a seconds term and is talking about a third because of the stunning policy failures of the US government over the last 50 years.

Were you alive in 2024?

Trump won by 10%.

It's absolutely not that people like Trump, it's just that democrats are inept. Literally all democrats had to do was run somebody that didn't have a record of losing primaries.

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

#465

Post by nullc »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #189
Bratmon wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Exactly why a government may refrain from collecting such data, as it is not even relevant in any kind of policy decision.

Winner winner. Every piece of data a state forcefully collects and retains should be strictly necessary for an important function and balanced carefully against worst case misuse.

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

#466

Post by [deleted] »

throwawa1 wrote: post #416
vel0city wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are 45 million Spanish speakers in the United States - in 1950 there were effectively zero. This is either a bald faced lie or demonstrates an extreme ignorance of history. There have been tons of Spanish speakers in the United States for a loooong time. Before Texas joined the United States, Spanish was an official language, as in 1837 a law was passed to ensure all laws were translated into Castilian. > Be…

[flagged]

[deleted]

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

#467

Post by donkey_brains »

LocalH wrote: post #447
robotresearcher wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, the way to change this is by voting. One election at a time, we can trend towards the better or worse.

We have to remove the power the current political duopoly has had for generations. Fuck the Republicans. Fuck the Democrats. Rally behind a third-party candidate and blow up the establishment with your vote

Hell yeah. And disregard anyone who says you’re “wasting your vote” or “splitting the vote”; they’re part of the problem and their defeatist thinking will get us nowhere.

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

#468

Post by estearum »

pandaman wrote: post #461
estearum wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay so in this scenario, if this woman wanted to actually vote on behalf of these people, all she had to do was pay a bunch of people to register with her address, get 10, 30, 100, or 1000 ballots mailed to her address, then fill out all of those ballots and mail them in and hope no one noticed dozens or hundreds or thousands of ballots coming from an address that would clearly and directly implicate the person who…

>hope no one noticed dozens or hundreds or thousands of ballots coming from an address So what? If it was illegal to register multiple voters at the same address then it could have been detected at the registration time. >And the trade off here is this person gets 10, 30, 100, or 1000 votes in a single county and at the minuscule risk of the rest of her life in prison? Did not you notice that this person has not been…

> Did not you notice that this person has not been charged with voting with other people ballots (even though she was able and most likely did that) and only with paying to register? Such a charge would be very hard to stick.

Huh? There is literally no evidence or even allegation of that. The person was paid to collect petition signatures, so she fraudulently obtained petition signatures. Which obviously are way less closely tracked than actual votes.

> So what? If it was illegal to register multiple voters at the same address then it could have been detected at the registration time.

Well it's not illegal to register multiple voters at the same address, obviously. It's illegal to vote under someone else's name. A bunch of votes coming in from a single residence would be flagged. Should voter registrations from a single address get flagged? Sure! And they probably do! But as you say, that's not a crime. Voting fraudulently is, which is not even alleged here.

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

#469

Post by testing22321 »

lazide wrote: post #396
testing22321 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The comments that this rather expensive endeavour should just be about getting a head count are also amusing to me Countries conduct censuses so they can understand, in great detail, what is going on with the people who make up the country. With this accurate information, improvement plans can be made, and life can be improved for everyone. The comments about just making it a head count give a very interesting wind…

Eh, that’s the ‘if people do the right thing’ approach. Many countries use census data to target (or even round up and murder) specific groups of people by religion, ethnicity, etc.

Ah yes, the old “bad guys did it 50+ years ago, therefore we shouldn’t collect data that will improve our country”

It’s no shock the standard of living continues to fall in what was once ostensibly the greatest country.

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

#470

Post by pandaman »

estearum wrote: post #468
pandaman wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>hope no one noticed dozens or hundreds or thousands of ballots coming from an address So what? If it was illegal to register multiple voters at the same address then it could have been detected at the registration time. >And the trade off here is this person gets 10, 30, 100, or 1000 votes in a single county and at the minuscule risk of the rest of her life in prison? Did not you notice that this person has not been…

> Did not you notice that this person has not been charged with voting with other people ballots (even though she was able and most likely did that) and only with paying to register? Such a charge would be very hard to stick. Huh? There is literally no evidence or even allegation of that. The person was paid to collect petition signatures, so she fraudulently obtained petition signatures. Which obviously are way less…

Not sure what you are doing now. You asked for a scheme, you got it and now are appearing to be saying that such a scheme would not work because people would get busted even though you admit yourself there would not be any evidence.
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