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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

#51

Post by simonw »

SoftTalker wrote: post #26
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…

The census isn't for helping the country make any decisions other than determining the number of representatives and apportionment of taxes. It should not be collecting any data that isn't necessary for that.

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-1/section-2...

> The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.

The key thing you're missing is "in such Manner as they shall by Law direct".

Congress has passed a whole bunch of laws that attach additional responsibilities to the census for the purpose of supporting government decisions.

The Permanent Census Office Act of 1902 for example, which established the census office and tacked on "an annual survey of cotton production, and other economic censuses" https://www.census.gov/about/history/historical-censuses-and...

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

#52

Post by lokar »

CAP_NET_ADMIN wrote: post #20
Pragmata wrote: post #3

Frankly 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…

1. People give the information to the government under the expectation that this data is to be kept private or used in such a way that individual targeting is made impossible, you break that expectation and people will lie or won't give you this data. 2. Without noise injection it's rather simple to do statistical attacks to reverse engineer individual entities. 3. This data is and has already been used in the past t…

Re point 1, not just an expectation, and explicit legal requirement.

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

#54

Post by pstuart »

SoftTalker wrote: post #26
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…

The census isn't for helping the country make any decisions other than determining the number of representatives and apportionment of taxes. It should not be collecting any data that isn't necessary for that.

That's not true, they also wanted to get an understanding of who they were governing.

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

#55

Post by simonw »

jonhohle wrote: post #18
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…

This seems’s like an issue created by congress. the constitution only requires a headcount by state. Maybe they should use another mechanism to collect demographic data. Since the concern is not about representation, but allocation, tax returns seem like an obvious alternative and they are already private and collected at a much more granular level.

I don't think the question "Has this person given birth to any children in the past 12 months?" would look good on a tax return.

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

#56

Post by anonymars »

righthand wrote: post #30
Pragmata wrote: post #3

Frankly 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…

Then dox yourself right now with your previous census answers and PII. There are several obvious reasons to keep the data private, all you have to do is use your brain.

I've never met a "privacy is irrelevant" advocate that doesn't close the door when they go to the toilet

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

#57

Post by greyface- »

righthand wrote: post #33
SoftTalker wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why is the census asking about those attrbutes at all. The Constitution requires a count. That's it. A number. We don't need to know the rest of it, or if we do, it should be surveyed separately with voluntary participation.

The census is already voluntary LOL. So we’d have two censuses?

Census participation is not voluntary. Failure to provide complete or accurate data is, in theory, punishable by a fine. Last census, I intentionally provided incomplete data on the web form, which resulted in a person with a clipboard and some stern questions showing up at my door.

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

#58

Post by notfromhere »

derektank wrote: post #28
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.

The entity most capable of weaponizing demographic data is the government itself. If people weren’t previously providing false information to the census, I’m skeptical that this change is what will push people over the edge.

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.

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

#59

Post by bagels »

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.

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.

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

#60

Post by latency-guy2 »

latency-guy2 wrote: post #49
simonw wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Counting illegals on a poorly defined framework of which is largely self attestation?

We also know that this premise is simply wrong, Census is statistical survey, no party in the world is legally allowed to inspect the contents of the individual form via Title 13.

Counting illegals is not possible under the Census currently or in any point in the future most likely

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/13/9

https://www.census.gov/topics/population/foreign-born/about/...

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