Posts tagged differential privacy
An Overview of Differential Privacy in the 2020 Decennial Census

To protect respondents’ privacy, for the 2020 Decennial Census the Census Bureau is using a modern disclosure avoidance approach called differential privacy. In brief, differential privacy adds statistical noise—small random additions or subtractions—into the data to reduce the risk that someone could reidentify any person or household.

In this post, we will: (1) describe how differential privacy is applied to the 2020 Decennial Census data; (2) review the Census Bureau’s guidance for 2020 Decennial Census data users; (3) provide an overview of the summary metrics file released by the Census Bureau; and (4) discuss some illustrative examples of the amount of error introduced to certain counts as reported in the summary metrics file.

Read More
Census & ACS, Demographics & PopulationCynthia Willnerdifferential privacy
Differential Privacy: Assessing 2020 Concerns using 2010 Census Data

To help data users assess the impacts of differential privacy in their communities, CTData used the IPUMS joint data release to develop an interface to compare the original 2010 town-level data with what the 2010 town-level data would look like if differential privacy was applied.

To what extent did the original 2010 Census data change after differential privacy was applied? We’ll look at a few variables below as examples. You can see what these and other variables look like in your community by visiting CTData’s interactive online tool.

Read More
Census & ACSMichelle Riordan-Nolddifferential privacy
What’s Changing with Census Data Availability? Differential Privacy: What is It and Why it Matters for Census 2020

CTData has traveled state to state on the conference circuit over the past few months. We recently attended the American Community Survey (ACS) Users Data Conference in Washington, DC; the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership Meeting in Milwaukee, WI; the Census State Data Center Conference in Charlotte, NC; and the Association for Public Data Users Conference in Washington DC. One of the most pressing topics of discussion was the 2020 Census and its new differential privacy policies. To help you gain some clarity about these contested policies, we’ll provide background about the census, discuss existing privacy protections, and describe upcoming changes to Census 2020 under differential privacy.

Read More
Census & ACSMichelle Riordan-Nolddifferential privacy