18 ms·

Why the 2020 census has 9 fake people in a single house

92 points by yedava 5y ago

Sporktacular 5y ago
Real privacy is only part of the equation. Accuracy will depend on the perception of privacy, letting people feel at ease about being honest.
Traster 5y ago
>The question I kept coming back to in conversations with computer scientists and the Census Bureau was: what would a real-world privacy harm look like? >McSherry suggested a scenario involving banks or insurance companies using reconstructed data to discriminate on the basis of racial or ethnic categories. ... >But discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity is illegal, That seems glaringly uncritical. It seems awfully close to "Well that couldn't happen because it's illegal!". >But there’s a simple solution to this that even skeptics like Ruggles support: get rid of the smallest blocks. But they're publishing block by block data, you, the user of the data can exclude that data yourself, and the added noise for large blocks is relatively small so you can ignore. So this proposed solution acheives almost nothing. I think we should come back to basics here: the census bureau has 1 job. Generate the data used for the federal government to allocate congressional seats to the states, and allocate spending. It's not really its job to provide data to academics for research. So the priority of "Do your job" vs "Do this other thing that's not really your job" weighs massively in favour of "Do your job". So be grateful for what they release, and realise that something that has the tiniest impact on them being able to do their job completely outweighs your need for them to do something that's not their job.
- apwheele 5y ago
  As a researcher who has (and continues to) use the publicly available census data, I agree with this. IMO it makes more sense to have higher quality micro level data products that are only available in statistical data centers, https://www.census.gov/about/adrm/fsrdc.html https://www.census.gov/about/adrm/fsrdc.html, as opposed to these aggregate tables that even before all this were of variable quality. This comes with a cost that not everyone can have easy access to the data anymore, but I think that will result in higher quality research in the end (even if less quantity overall). Apportionment should be done in some standard way as well by states/fed instead of the gerrymandering mess we have now, but unfortunately that is not likely to happen anytime soon.
sidewndr46 5y ago
My solution to this was remarkably simple. When the census person came by, I told them I lived in my house and shut the door. There is no obligation to give any other information, at all.
- rafram 5y ago
  As a former Census taker, you’re the type of person who made my day just a little bit worse each time.
paulpauper 5y ago
when I read this what came to mind was renormalization. the cancellation process of adding to some and removing from others
aaron695 5y ago
frankfrankfrank 5y ago
What I find more troubling is that I know for a fact of several people who did not respond to the surveys and were then never again contacted/followed up with as was indicated they would be. That was in specific area, which, along with other knowledge and experience with working with the Census bureau years earlier, even before they were in the news for being extremely behind the curve ball even before the pandemic; makes me extremely concerned that the data is not at all accurate. From my perspective it is not at all unreasonable that the 2020 Census data may have a lot more “noise” in order to cover up inaccuracy. I suspect that with some data analysis it should be relatively easy to at least get an indication of something being of between the 2010 and 2020 census along with the community surveys. I have been around these things in the FedGov and what I know does not at all give me a lot of confidence about this “noise for privacy” explanation. Does anyone know if they announced this move to increased “privacy” a long time ago or if it’s just a relatively recent thing? I am not aware of such an announcement. All the sudden the government is concerned with privacy???
- zamadatix 5y ago
  > Does anyone know if they announced this move to increased “privacy” a long time ago or if it’s just a relatively recent thing? I am not aware of such an announcement. I don't really keep an eye on census news myself but taking a look I did find this page from 2018 talking about the latest set of changes to go into effect for the (then upcoming) 2020 census https://web.archive.org/web/20181107155115/https://www.census.gov/about/policies/privacy/statistical_safeguards.html https://web.archive.org/web/20181107155115/https://www.censu...
  - gumby 5y ago
    I have a friend who works for the Census (former MIT professor) and he says that it has been a priority for the Census bureau for several censuses.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > Does anyone know if they announced this move to increased “privacy” a long time ago or if it’s just a relatively recent thing? By long-standing law, the census data has to be kept anonymous for 72+ years. The census employs long term employees to help protect that privacy. This is one result.
achille 5y ago
Technical explanation by minutephysics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT19VwBAqKA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT19VwBAqKA The amount of privacy is configurable, and researchers who would like to tune it (in either direction) can make a plea so the public can decide the amount of privacy loss they're willing give up in order to aid research. Each culture is different and has different tolerances for privacy and amount of intrusiveness.
_Nat_ 5y ago
> In a [court filing](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.almd.75040/gov.uscourts.almd.75040.41.1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.almd.75... ) last April, Abowd wrote that “our simulated attack showed that a conservative attack scenario using just 6 billion of the over 150 billion statistics released in 2010 would allow an attacker to accurately re-identify at least 52 million 2010 Census respondents (17% of the population) and the attacker would have a high degree of confidence in their results with minimal additional verification or field work.” What would "re-identification" expose? For example, say Alice is re-identified: what does the attacker then know about Alice?
- snarkerson 5y ago
  Would like to talk about an extended warranty for your car? Or end of life care for your 78yo family member? Or super awesome student loans for your 16yo family members? That is just low hanging fruit. Imagine cross referencing other data sources to get more complete images of everyone in 52m responder households.
  - quitit 5y ago
    A census is only useful if the participants can fill out the paperwork honestly. I actually don't understand the people who don't see this being a problem, nor why they would believe layered privacy protections aren't useful. It would seem irresponsible to release accurate or detailed census data to the general public. To use an example that I'm aware of: in the USA (but likely exists in other places), there are groups of individuals which seek out and target interracial couples. These couples are then harassed and violence is not uncommon. Approaches such as Differential Privacy exist to address this specific privacy weakness. The act of fuzzying the data this way is an accepted method for the data to only be useful for its intended purpose. As you and others have noted it's trivial to build up various use cases, from the commercially annoying to the dangerous: the assumption that individuals and companies are never going to try to exploit this data or break the law is perhaps dangerously naive.
    - lupire 5y ago
WinterMount223 5y ago
Flip a coin. Heads you answer the truth. Tails you flip again: heads you answer A, tails you answer not A. Construct a binary tree as required.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
The census should be done by overhead satellite images using statistical approaches. It doesn’t matter precisely how many people there are, because that is changing every day.
- Retric 5y ago
  The census is extremely important not just for voting but also to assigning government services.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    The government has already proven itself to be untrustworthy, not sure what benefit people get out of giving them personal information about their age, income, etc. The IRS, DMV, social security, etc already has all the information they need. Saying it is important is like saying it is important to give out your information to Google to make it easier to cater search results and give you targeted advertisements.
    - Retric 5y ago
      Where to build specific medical facilities is based on age and population. A community of 25 year old heterosexuals is going to have kids, where a community of 85 year olds is going to have geriatric issues. It also impacts the needs for transportation etc. Income adjusts where you have to subsidize local hospitals, where to place welfare offices etc. As to why you need to collect this info again, homeless people don’t report income to the IRS etc.
      - encryptluks2 5y ago
        > As to why you need to collect this info again, homeless people don’t report income to the IRS etc. Many homeless people also do not have mail, so they never get contacted or participate in the census. If they are in a shelter, then that shelter already has their information.
chairmanwow1 5y ago
Differential Privacy is an awesome field of study and is something being used at huge scale all over industry (Apple folks are BIG on this. I think it’s an awesome technique, but seems there is some misunderstanding about the usefulness of the technique ITT.
- readams 5y ago
  It's the standard framework used by Google also.
IncRnd 5y ago
I don't believe that house residents are being changed in order to stop identification attacks. That simply doesn't have the ring of truth, and in no other earlier press release or discussion about the Census did I ever see that mentioned. This Census action actually doesn't stop that attack from materializing. It is known and possible to purchase DMV records that give information about residents. People already do this all the time. I'll guarantee you that DMV records are overall more correct than Census data. It's just the intentional recording of falsified data.
- WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
- freeone3000 5y ago
  ? Talk to someone who actually worked on the census. These are fudge numbers used for differential privacy for low-count categories in a census block. The counts at district and state levels are and must be accurate; individual blocks are fudged.
  - IncRnd 5y ago
    Why? That doesn't make the data accurate. They are still bad data, and DMV records already allow this supposed attack far more effectively and directly. This munging of data doesn't do what it is purported to do. It is security theatre and just a pretense at security.
    - freeone3000 5y ago
      DMV records are not publically published! Census records are, after a mere 72 years. The protection isn't from your government, it's from everyone else in the world.
      - IncRnd 5y ago
        That's far from the whole truth. People and companies purchase DMV records nationwide from brokers.
dzink 5y ago
Some likely reasons for privacy: protect against gerrymandering, automated marketing, etc.
Module_compile 5y ago
"The U.S. census is a direct count of every resident. Required by the Constitution, it has taken place every decade since 1790." "The data it collects is used to determine political representation in Congress and to direct more than $1.5 trillion in federal funding annually." Serious questions... 1.) What data are they anonymizing? Especially by "randomizing numbers by taking numbers in one place to another place", doesn't this defeat the purpose of a census? 2.) Are they asking your political affiliation? I never got asked this, rather just: "how many people live here" - this is all I was asked. 3.) What other questions are they asking residents? Is it different in each state? What are they doing with this data? Is it legal? 4.) Isn't this then number used to assign how many "congressional seats" go to which state?
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > 1.) What data are they anonymizing? Especially by "randomizing numbers by taking numbers in one place to another place", doesn't this defeat the purpose of a census? You can mix up data at the individual level so that the aggregate statistics that matter are still accurate. That way the individual is protected, but the data still has meaning.
- jarboot 5y ago
  If you googled a bit, you could have found the answers to 2 and 3: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/technical-documentation/questionnaires-and-instructions/questionnaires/2020-informational-questionnaire-english_DI-Q1.pdf https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/tech...
  - Module_compile 5y ago
    I was being lazy, you're right. I don't recall ever filling one of those forms out however. I do recall a Census worker coming door to door and I suppose filing this form on my behalf. But I appreciate the link.
devwastaken 5y ago
Anonimizing data to convince the public their information Is safe instead of gathering accurate data is exactly the kind of inefficiency that must be expelled from government. I worked census out of a duty of democracy. Overwhelmingly the people I interviewed thought it was completely useless, that the "government already knew", or that I was secretly the IRS. There are multiple instances of door slamming, hostile threats, and people who thought that I was somehow the representative of the president of the United States. A guy ran me down in the road to tell me I "ain't no fbi agent" after I left a census flyer on their door. Census bureau were almost trying to get us killed at this point since we were not allowed to have self defense with us. They wanted us to go to known meth labs, quote: "anecdotal comments are not justification.". Multiple others on our team had a gun waved at them when they went to do reinterviews (checking others work) because the original worker got that information from a neighbor to avoid the threat. But the census system doesn't allow you to do that without attempting the actual location a number of times (annoying them). There is one solution to all of this, and that is to return to the constitutional requirements. The single number of how many people live there. Nothing about money or jobs or anything else. But I'm afraid the census has already destroyed that opportunity, the 2010 "long forms" are now forever associated with the census.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  I'm curious when and where that was. I was an enumerator for the 2000 Census in Los Angeles County and can't remember a single instance of hostility or even non-compliance once I explained what I was doing. The households I had to visit mostly didn't fill out the original form because they didn't speak English.
- lupire 5y ago
  > Anonimizing data to convince the public their information Is safe instead of gathering accurate data is exactly the kind of inefficiency that must be expelled from government. Your proposal is also anonymized, by default. I think you mean: Anonimizing [extra] data to convince the public their information Is safe instead of gathering [only the data they need] is exactly the kind of [overreach] that must be expelled from government.
- 5y ago
kderbyma 5y ago
or....how we messed up COVID data and election data for giggles....
- freeone3000 5y ago
  Counts are accurate at the district and state level. Differential privacy has no impact on elections.
INTPenis 5y ago
That's interesting but what I reacted to was this paragraph; >According to census data, this block—and hence this house—had 14 residents in 2020: one Hispanic person, seven white people, three biracial people (white and black), two multi-racial people (white, black, and American Indian), and one person of “some other race.” There were supposedly eight adults and six children living in the house. Why is this important? I love how they trail off at the end there. So if you don't qualify for bi-racial you're "some other race". What if your grandparents were biracial? Does that make you some other race? Where does this end? Don't mistake this for me trying to make a point about "woke". I'm a Swede who truly finds it fascinating how the United States emphasize people's "race" instead of their heritage (nationality).
- rafram 5y ago
  No, your assumption that “some other race” means you “don’t qualify for bi-racial” is wrong. “Some other race” means you don’t identify with any of the racial categories on the Census, and in practice that means you’re Hispanic/Latino or Middle Eastern - those groups are officially grouped into white, but respondents often don’t identify that way. If your grandparents were biracial you’d be biracial.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  The US census allows you to specify your race from a list of options or choose other. A person with biracial parents can just choose whatever they feel best identifies them. There is no "qualifies". Nationality does not work in the US. In Sweden (which, ironically given your question doesn't seem to publish country level ethnicity statistics), most Swedes are 12th generation or older. That pretty much predates the US. Meanwhile, other issues on ethnicity are that approximately 12% of Americans can only list "ancestors kidnapped from somewhere in Africa"
- brorfred 5y ago
  The importance of collecting race data is because of a history of systematic discrimination based on race. It's not for example Black or Hispanic groups that decided that those categories are important, it was the people creating Jim Crow Laws, Redlining, Bank discrimination, unequal resource distribution to schools, racial discrimination of public pools, racially based differences in policing strategies etc. The reason to ask these question is to make it possible to identify such discrimination. Sweden is a great example of why this is important. There it is much harder to identify such kind of discrimination due to poor data. See for example the treatment of Romas or Afro Swedes.
throwawayffffas 5y ago
I don't get it, why go through the trouble of releasing block level information if you are going to release incorrect numbers? Just don't release block level data, keep it in the county or election district.

92 points by yedava 5y ago

Real privacy is only part of the equation. Accuracy will depend on the perception of privacy, letting people feel at ease about being honest.

Traster 5y ago

>The question I kept coming back to in conversations with computer scientists and the Census Bureau was: what would a real-world privacy harm look like? >McSherry suggested a scenario involving banks or insurance companies using reconstructed data to discriminate on the basis of racial or ethnic categories. ... >But discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity is illegal, That seems glaringly uncritical. It seems awfully close to "Well that couldn't happen because it's illegal!". >But there’s a simple solution to this that even skeptics like Ruggles support: get rid of the smallest blocks. But they're publishing block by block data, you, the user of the data can exclude that data yourself, and the added noise for large blocks is relatively small so you can ignore. So this proposed solution acheives almost nothing. I think we should come back to basics here: the census bureau has 1 job. Generate the data used for the federal government to allocate congressional seats to the states, and allocate spending. It's not really its job to provide data to academics for research. So the priority of "Do your job" vs "Do this other thing that's not really your job" weighs massively in favour of "Do your job". So be grateful for what they release, and realise that something that has the tiniest impact on them being able to do their job completely outweighs your need for them to do something that's not their job.

apwheele 5y ago
As a researcher who has (and continues to) use the publicly available census data, I agree with this. IMO it makes more sense to have higher quality micro level data products that are only available in statistical data centers, https://www.census.gov/about/adrm/fsrdc.html https://www.census.gov/about/adrm/fsrdc.html, as opposed to these aggregate tables that even before all this were of variable quality. This comes with a cost that not everyone can have easy access to the data anymore, but I think that will result in higher quality research in the end (even if less quantity overall). Apportionment should be done in some standard way as well by states/fed instead of the gerrymandering mess we have now, but unfortunately that is not likely to happen anytime soon.

sidewndr46 5y ago

My solution to this was remarkably simple. When the census person came by, I told them I lived in my house and shut the door. There is no obligation to give any other information, at all.

rafram 5y ago
As a former Census taker, you’re the type of person who made my day just a little bit worse each time.

paulpauper 5y ago

when I read this what came to mind was renormalization. the cancellation process of adding to some and removing from others

aaron695 5y ago

frankfrankfrank 5y ago

What I find more troubling is that I know for a fact of several people who did not respond to the surveys and were then never again contacted/followed up with as was indicated they would be. That was in specific area, which, along with other knowledge and experience with working with the Census bureau years earlier, even before they were in the news for being extremely behind the curve ball even before the pandemic; makes me extremely concerned that the data is not at all accurate. From my perspective it is not at all unreasonable that the 2020 Census data may have a lot more “noise” in order to cover up inaccuracy. I suspect that with some data analysis it should be relatively easy to at least get an indication of something being of between the 2010 and 2020 census along with the community surveys. I have been around these things in the FedGov and what I know does not at all give me a lot of confidence about this “noise for privacy” explanation. Does anyone know if they announced this move to increased “privacy” a long time ago or if it’s just a relatively recent thing? I am not aware of such an announcement. All the sudden the government is concerned with privacy???

zamadatix 5y ago
> Does anyone know if they announced this move to increased “privacy” a long time ago or if it’s just a relatively recent thing? I am not aware of such an announcement. I don't really keep an eye on census news myself but taking a look I did find this page from 2018 talking about the latest set of changes to go into effect for the (then upcoming) 2020 census https://web.archive.org/web/20181107155115/https://www.census.gov/about/policies/privacy/statistical_safeguards.html https://web.archive.org/web/20181107155115/https://www.censu...
- gumby 5y ago
  I have a friend who works for the Census (former MIT professor) and he says that it has been a priority for the Census bureau for several censuses.
HWR_14 5y ago
> Does anyone know if they announced this move to increased “privacy” a long time ago or if it’s just a relatively recent thing? By long-standing law, the census data has to be kept anonymous for 72+ years. The census employs long term employees to help protect that privacy. This is one result.

achille 5y ago

Technical explanation by minutephysics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT19VwBAqKA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT19VwBAqKA The amount of privacy is configurable, and researchers who would like to tune it (in either direction) can make a plea so the public can decide the amount of privacy loss they're willing give up in order to aid research. Each culture is different and has different tolerances for privacy and amount of intrusiveness.

_Nat_ 5y ago

> In a [court filing](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.almd.75040/gov.uscourts.almd.75040.41.1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.almd.75... ) last April, Abowd wrote that “our simulated attack showed that a conservative attack scenario using just 6 billion of the over 150 billion statistics released in 2010 would allow an attacker to accurately re-identify at least 52 million 2010 Census respondents (17% of the population) and the attacker would have a high degree of confidence in their results with minimal additional verification or field work.” What would "re-identification" expose? For example, say Alice is re-identified: what does the attacker then know about Alice?

snarkerson 5y ago
Would like to talk about an extended warranty for your car? Or end of life care for your 78yo family member? Or super awesome student loans for your 16yo family members? That is just low hanging fruit. Imagine cross referencing other data sources to get more complete images of everyone in 52m responder households.
- quitit 5y ago
  A census is only useful if the participants can fill out the paperwork honestly. I actually don't understand the people who don't see this being a problem, nor why they would believe layered privacy protections aren't useful. It would seem irresponsible to release accurate or detailed census data to the general public. To use an example that I'm aware of: in the USA (but likely exists in other places), there are groups of individuals which seek out and target interracial couples. These couples are then harassed and violence is not uncommon. Approaches such as Differential Privacy exist to address this specific privacy weakness. The act of fuzzying the data this way is an accepted method for the data to only be useful for its intended purpose. As you and others have noted it's trivial to build up various use cases, from the commercially annoying to the dangerous: the assumption that individuals and companies are never going to try to exploit this data or break the law is perhaps dangerously naive.
  - lupire 5y ago

WinterMount223 5y ago

Flip a coin. Heads you answer the truth. Tails you flip again: heads you answer A, tails you answer not A. Construct a binary tree as required.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

The census should be done by overhead satellite images using statistical approaches. It doesn’t matter precisely how many people there are, because that is changing every day.

Retric 5y ago
The census is extremely important not just for voting but also to assigning government services.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  The government has already proven itself to be untrustworthy, not sure what benefit people get out of giving them personal information about their age, income, etc. The IRS, DMV, social security, etc already has all the information they need. Saying it is important is like saying it is important to give out your information to Google to make it easier to cater search results and give you targeted advertisements.
  - Retric 5y ago
    Where to build specific medical facilities is based on age and population. A community of 25 year old heterosexuals is going to have kids, where a community of 85 year olds is going to have geriatric issues. It also impacts the needs for transportation etc. Income adjusts where you have to subsidize local hospitals, where to place welfare offices etc. As to why you need to collect this info again, homeless people don’t report income to the IRS etc.
    - encryptluks2 5y ago
      > As to why you need to collect this info again, homeless people don’t report income to the IRS etc. Many homeless people also do not have mail, so they never get contacted or participate in the census. If they are in a shelter, then that shelter already has their information.

chairmanwow1 5y ago

Differential Privacy is an awesome field of study and is something being used at huge scale all over industry (Apple folks are BIG on this. I think it’s an awesome technique, but seems there is some misunderstanding about the usefulness of the technique ITT.

readams 5y ago
It's the standard framework used by Google also.

IncRnd 5y ago

I don't believe that house residents are being changed in order to stop identification attacks. That simply doesn't have the ring of truth, and in no other earlier press release or discussion about the Census did I ever see that mentioned. This Census action actually doesn't stop that attack from materializing. It is known and possible to purchase DMV records that give information about residents. People already do this all the time. I'll guarantee you that DMV records are overall more correct than Census data. It's just the intentional recording of falsified data.

WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
freeone3000 5y ago
? Talk to someone who actually worked on the census. These are fudge numbers used for differential privacy for low-count categories in a census block. The counts at district and state levels are and must be accurate; individual blocks are fudged.
- IncRnd 5y ago
  Why? That doesn't make the data accurate. They are still bad data, and DMV records already allow this supposed attack far more effectively and directly. This munging of data doesn't do what it is purported to do. It is security theatre and just a pretense at security.
  - freeone3000 5y ago
    DMV records are not publically published! Census records are, after a mere 72 years. The protection isn't from your government, it's from everyone else in the world.
    - IncRnd 5y ago
      That's far from the whole truth. People and companies purchase DMV records nationwide from brokers.

dzink 5y ago

Some likely reasons for privacy: protect against gerrymandering, automated marketing, etc.

Module_compile 5y ago

"The U.S. census is a direct count of every resident. Required by the Constitution, it has taken place every decade since 1790." "The data it collects is used to determine political representation in Congress and to direct more than $1.5 trillion in federal funding annually." Serious questions... 1.) What data are they anonymizing? Especially by "randomizing numbers by taking numbers in one place to another place", doesn't this defeat the purpose of a census? 2.) Are they asking your political affiliation? I never got asked this, rather just: "how many people live here" - this is all I was asked. 3.) What other questions are they asking residents? Is it different in each state? What are they doing with this data? Is it legal? 4.) Isn't this then number used to assign how many "congressional seats" go to which state?

heavyset_go 5y ago
> 1.) What data are they anonymizing? Especially by "randomizing numbers by taking numbers in one place to another place", doesn't this defeat the purpose of a census? You can mix up data at the individual level so that the aggregate statistics that matter are still accurate. That way the individual is protected, but the data still has meaning.
jarboot 5y ago
If you googled a bit, you could have found the answers to 2 and 3: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/technical-documentation/questionnaires-and-instructions/questionnaires/2020-informational-questionnaire-english_DI-Q1.pdf https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/2020/tech...
- Module_compile 5y ago
  I was being lazy, you're right. I don't recall ever filling one of those forms out however. I do recall a Census worker coming door to door and I suppose filing this form on my behalf. But I appreciate the link.

devwastaken 5y ago

Anonimizing data to convince the public their information Is safe instead of gathering accurate data is exactly the kind of inefficiency that must be expelled from government. I worked census out of a duty of democracy. Overwhelmingly the people I interviewed thought it was completely useless, that the "government already knew", or that I was secretly the IRS. There are multiple instances of door slamming, hostile threats, and people who thought that I was somehow the representative of the president of the United States. A guy ran me down in the road to tell me I "ain't no fbi agent" after I left a census flyer on their door. Census bureau were almost trying to get us killed at this point since we were not allowed to have self defense with us. They wanted us to go to known meth labs, quote: "anecdotal comments are not justification.". Multiple others on our team had a gun waved at them when they went to do reinterviews (checking others work) because the original worker got that information from a neighbor to avoid the threat. But the census system doesn't allow you to do that without attempting the actual location a number of times (annoying them). There is one solution to all of this, and that is to return to the constitutional requirements. The single number of how many people live there. Nothing about money or jobs or anything else. But I'm afraid the census has already destroyed that opportunity, the 2010 "long forms" are now forever associated with the census.

nonameiguess 5y ago
I'm curious when and where that was. I was an enumerator for the 2000 Census in Los Angeles County and can't remember a single instance of hostility or even non-compliance once I explained what I was doing. The households I had to visit mostly didn't fill out the original form because they didn't speak English.
lupire 5y ago
> Anonimizing data to convince the public their information Is safe instead of gathering accurate data is exactly the kind of inefficiency that must be expelled from government. Your proposal is also anonymized, by default. I think you mean: Anonimizing [extra] data to convince the public their information Is safe instead of gathering [only the data they need] is exactly the kind of [overreach] that must be expelled from government.
5y ago

kderbyma 5y ago

or....how we messed up COVID data and election data for giggles....

freeone3000 5y ago
Counts are accurate at the district and state level. Differential privacy has no impact on elections.

INTPenis 5y ago

That's interesting but what I reacted to was this paragraph; >According to census data, this block—and hence this house—had 14 residents in 2020: one Hispanic person, seven white people, three biracial people (white and black), two multi-racial people (white, black, and American Indian), and one person of “some other race.” There were supposedly eight adults and six children living in the house. Why is this important? I love how they trail off at the end there. So if you don't qualify for bi-racial you're "some other race". What if your grandparents were biracial? Does that make you some other race? Where does this end? Don't mistake this for me trying to make a point about "woke". I'm a Swede who truly finds it fascinating how the United States emphasize people's "race" instead of their heritage (nationality).

rafram 5y ago
No, your assumption that “some other race” means you “don’t qualify for bi-racial” is wrong. “Some other race” means you don’t identify with any of the racial categories on the Census, and in practice that means you’re Hispanic/Latino or Middle Eastern - those groups are officially grouped into white, but respondents often don’t identify that way. If your grandparents were biracial you’d be biracial.
HWR_14 5y ago
The US census allows you to specify your race from a list of options or choose other. A person with biracial parents can just choose whatever they feel best identifies them. There is no "qualifies". Nationality does not work in the US. In Sweden (which, ironically given your question doesn't seem to publish country level ethnicity statistics), most Swedes are 12th generation or older. That pretty much predates the US. Meanwhile, other issues on ethnicity are that approximately 12% of Americans can only list "ancestors kidnapped from somewhere in Africa"
brorfred 5y ago
The importance of collecting race data is because of a history of systematic discrimination based on race. It's not for example Black or Hispanic groups that decided that those categories are important, it was the people creating Jim Crow Laws, Redlining, Bank discrimination, unequal resource distribution to schools, racial discrimination of public pools, racially based differences in policing strategies etc. The reason to ask these question is to make it possible to identify such discrimination. Sweden is a great example of why this is important. There it is much harder to identify such kind of discrimination due to poor data. See for example the treatment of Romas or Afro Swedes.

throwawayffffas 5y ago

I don't get it, why go through the trouble of releasing block level information if you are going to release incorrect numbers? Just don't release block level data, keep it in the county or election district.