> On June 4, 2026, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce issued a directive (DAO 216-26) > DAO-216-26 bans differential privacy and other modern (and not so modern) techniques. It restricts disclosure avoidance techniques to “coarsening,” > DAO-216-26 forbids “noise infusion”, described as “methods that involve modifying a dataset by adding random values, or noise.” > By forbidding noise infusion, the directive bans the dis…
I have a very low opinion of the current US administration, which might be a blindspot when they do something both horrible and not caveman-like in its sophistication. I’m genuinely surprised they would look into differential privacy (again: this sounds judgmental, but I’m just trying to confess my prejudice). I’m more surprised that they were able to look into it and come to the conclusion that they should get rid o…
> People who were using Census data to actually reconstruct records could no longer do so. Demographers admitted that this was common practice. It's also an open secret that this was done by political operatives as part of gerrymandering efforts.