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Noise infusion banned from statistical products published by Census Bureau

desfontain.es

81–90 of 662 posts

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

#81
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.

[deleted]

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

#82
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]

As planned by whom?

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

#83
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]

How do you get the idea that migration is "planned"? You've lost the plot entirely

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

#84
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.

You can’t completely trust what people say anyway. There are stated preferences and observed preferences in economics but it applies to other areas of life.

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

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone actually believe this crap? You think the census is what the government would use to mass identify and imprison people, not the NSA database(s)? You think homeland security, or the FBI, or any other alphabet agency doesn't already have access to a giant list of people? Think about what meta knows about everyone, or Google. You do realize that the US gov has read access to their core databases right? "The…

Even at a quick glance this doesn't make any sense. The census is literally how they get the data. Where else would it come from? Drones? Every computer being hacked Michael Bay style?

Data mining companies?

Don’t forget there’s an entire industry that exists solely for this purpose.

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

#86
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.

Does anyone actually believe this crap? You think the census is what the government would use to mass identify and imprison people, not the NSA database(s)? You think homeland security, or the FBI, or any other alphabet agency doesn't already have access to a giant list of people? Think about what meta knows about everyone, or Google. You do realize that the US gov has read access to their core databases right? "The…

Yeah okay fair, I was about to post a knee jerk reaction, but it's well known that the US government can obtain higher quality data by just simply buying it from the public market.

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

#87

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 .

"What is your religious affiliation" makes absolutely no sense in a census exercise. IMO.

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

#88
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…

I'd like to know when they stopped publishing census data. I have used it for genealogical purposes to track ancestors: you can see exactly who was living in which house, how they are related, and what their ages are (I found that women in my family often reported, both on the census and marriage documents, being younger than they actually were). I don't think I've seen data from after 1950, though. I don't understan…

The Census Bureau is a lot more than the 10-year Census, and it already makes very extensive use of IRS data and other administrative sources. Virtually everything that is published using these sources uses either differential privacy or other privacy protection methods that are prohibited by the order. I'm guessing that a lot of those pieces of data are just going to be put on hold until the order is reversed or weakened. A number of things might have to go away permanently, as there's almost certainly no way to protect privacy in them without some kind of noise infusion.

TBH I don't think the people who wrote this knew how much collateral impact it would have.

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

#89
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.

Remember “leftist “ and transgender activists are terrorists now. First they came for…

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

#90
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.

Remember “leftist “ and transgender activists are terrorists now. First they came for…

I'm pretty sure they didn't think this through in a comprehensive fashion.

Because making it esy to find all the rich people just seems like a very bad idea given the direction things are going.

When it was broad, the only thing you could do was locate, say, large minority groups. Blacks and latinos for instance. And even that led to problems. I can't imagine what will happen when we can drill down and tease out immigrants from citizens. Gay from straight. Rich from well to do. And so on.

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