RESEARCHERS ASK CENSUS TO STOP CONTROVERSIAL PRIVACY METHOD

Prominent demographers are asking the U.S. Census Bureau to abandon a controversial method for protecting survey and census participants’ confidentiality, saying it is jeopardizing the usability of numbers that are the foundation of the nation’s data infrastructure. 

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The Census Bureau embraced using differential privacy algorithms for the first time with the release last year of the first round of 2020 census data. Those numbers were used for determining how many congressional seats each state gets, as well as redrawing political districts in a once-a-decade process known as redistricting. 

The demographers and other researchers ask in a letter to Census Bureau Director Robert Santos that the agency drop future plans to use the algorithms on two other important data releases — annual population estimates and the American Community Survey figures. The annual population estimates are used in the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal funding each year. The American Community Survey provides the most comprehensive data on how people in the U.S. live by asking questions about commuting times, internet access, family life, income, education levels, disabilities, military service and employment.

The privacy protection methods “are inappropriate for the critically important data sets, which are fundamental to American democracy and to equity in redistricting, fund allocation and planning for government services of all kind,” the letter said.