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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

#571

Post by ProllyInfamous »

themgt wrote: post #561
defrost wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To optimally crack a district to bias in one parties favour it is often required to literally run a boundary down a street to separate one side (close to a university, say) from the other. Once you've table voter preferences to actual street addresses you are no longer in the realm of "broad area cumulative averages and medians".

My favorite gerrymandering story was when I learned an ~800 student local college had been split down the middle, so students were in different congressional districts depending on their dorm building.

There is a stretch of US183 in Austin, Texas, which allows you to drive through seven congressional districts in a matter of minutes.

Also see: Nashville, Tennessee

Like your dormroom example, ATX is very progressive.

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

#572

Post by projektfu »

bee_rider wrote: post #521
projektfu wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would probably not be constitutional. I don't think the states are unable to run their own census, but the Constitution requires a federal one.

How much data is needed to fulfill the constitutional requirement?

That's a different question. Others have addressed why the census enumerates various things. The first census in 1790 enumerated the name of every head of household and the number of free white men age 16 and over, free white males under 16, free white women, other free persons and slaves in each household. An assistant was designated for each state.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/census/1790/1790cens...

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

#573

Post by inigyou »

Guvante wrote: post #545
inigyou wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German law doesn't really care if your consent to a contract was informed or not. If you technically consented, then you consented. This is also how we got the recent thread about .at domains renewing automatically and the registry suing you if you don't pay.

That can happen in the US too... When you agree to a contract you are bound to the terms of it. Why do you think it is so common to hear horror stories about gym memberships? But in your example no one agreed to the contract which means no agreement exists. Generally you can say that payment was agreement to terms but that doesn't work if you deceived to get the payment.

> in your example no one agreed to the contract which means no agreement exists.

??? you agreed to it by registering a .at domain. There was probably some fine print at your registrar which says you agree with the registry policies

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

#574

Post by talon8635 »

adastra22 wrote: post #269
talon8635 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t religion, for those who follow it (I don’t), one of if not the most important aspects of their identity and life’s purpose? I love breakfast food, but not that much. Don’t some religions not get along very well? Given your criteria, what should be asked? Check the boxes for the physical and mental illnesses you have? What’s your BMI? How much time do you spend online? What percent of your diet is highly process…

They are asking what policy decisions hinge on that religion question. Given 1st amendment protections against government policy that favors one religion over another, I think that’s a fair question to ask.

Don’t some countries in EU have face covering bans that have to take religious practices into consideration?

Isn’t (non) taxation of religious institutions an ongoing debate? Wouldn’t knowing religious census data aid in exploring that?

Those are two things that’s popped into my head immediately. If I thought about it for an extended period of time, especially if I knew more about governed t and law, I’m sure there would be other avenues of consideration.

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

#575

Post by ghaff »

kccqzy wrote: post #462

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 censu…

I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on re-indentification a while back related to a research journal I was helping with and some presentations I was giving. One of the things I ran across was how easy it was to de-anonymize healthcare records from way less information than one might assume.

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

#576

Post by amanaplanacanal »

ipaddr wrote: post #169
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are saying the candidates are forced on us by someone else. But that's just wrong, we choose the candidates. Anybody can run, there is no secret cabal that decides who can run and who can't.

Didn't happen last year when Kamila was selected by the leaders. But in normal years candidates are successful because of the amount of money they can raise. The more they can raise the more brainwashing ads they can buy. The non so secret cabal is the donor class. Anyone can run? You must meet requirements on age and how long you have lived in the US. You must pay fees and provide signatures for each state. If doing…

The Kamala thing was unfortunate, but I'm not sure what else they could do. Biden bowed out too late to rerun the primaries, and the whole purpose of the vice president is to take over when the president can't perform any more.

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

#577

Post by estearum »

dmd wrote: post #570
inigyou wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a screwworm infestation now because the Idiot In Chief sawthe previous control method had trans genic flies.

One of my colleagues study was shut down because the medication “engendered a strong response”.

Calling this administration an idiocracy is insanely generous

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

#579

Post by ghaff »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #531
appreciatorBus wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is silly. An argument about whether or not to deploy differential privacy on large statistical databases has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not you give your address to have a package delivered. If you want the package delivered, you have to give your address. On the other hand, it’s not at all clear that people should have to involuntarily, my force of law, offer up all sorts of personal details about thei…

It’s not silly. I’m responding to this: > If data about the public is so dangerous that we must disguise the results, then perhaps its data we shouldn’t be collecting in the first place. We agree that doxxing is dangerous online yes? Your point about the white pages is exactly what I’m talking about. A piece of data isn’t inherently dangerous or not dangerous. It’s about context and ease of access by actors with vari…

>We agree that doxxing is dangerous online yes?

Potentially. But this is also information that was not historically a deep dark secret absent measures that, to a first approximation, no one took.

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

#580

Post by estearum »

pandaman wrote: post #565
estearum wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What...? Virtually every type of fraud is first detected by detection of a nominally legal but abnormal behavior, then it's investigated to figure out whether fraud actually occurred. That would – obviously – be exactly how any voter fraud detection scheme works, but I guess you're saying that because the initially detected abnormality is not itself illegal, it wouldn't be investigated? This is like saying "it's not…

Now you are just saying "illegal voting can be detected in this scheme even though I don't know how". Very smart!

You seem very confused.

Here's how it's detected: "There are 1000 ballots from this one address that has never had more than 3 ballots sent from it. We should look it up in our GIS and tax records and see how many people reside there. We should also make sure that the affiliated registrations are fully documented as having individual residencies there from e.g. their drivers licenses or utility bills at time of registration."

Sorry but you are naive beyond words if you think voting systems don't flag even a dozen ballots sent to a single residential address, or you don't think there's any investigative capability to look further into flagged cases.

Which do you believe? There are only three options:

1. You believe that 1000 ballots sent to a single address will not be flagged

2. You believe that it would be flagged but not investigated

3. You believe it would be flagged and investigated, but not actually result in any prosecutable offense

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