Escalation of Commitment: A Case Study of the United States Census Bureau Efforts to Implement Differential Privacy for the 2020 Decennial Census (Forthcoming in: In Proceedings of Privacy in Statistical Databases -PSD 2024)

Privacy in Statistical Databases. PSD 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer.

11 Pages Posted: 31 Jul 2024

See all articles by Krish Muralidhar

Krish Muralidhar

University of Oklahoma

Steven Ruggles

University of Minnesota - Minneapolis

Date Written: July 21, 2024

Abstract

In 2017, the United States Census Bureau announced that because of high disclosure risk in the methodology (data swapping) used to produce tabular data for the 2010 census, a different protection mechanism based on differential privacy would be used for the 2020 census. While there have been many studies evaluating the result of this change, there has been no rigorous examination of disclosure risk claims resulting from the released 2010 tabular data. In this study we perform such an evaluation. We show that the procedures used to evaluate disclosure risk are unreliable and resulted in inflated disclosure risk. Demonstration data products released using the new procedure were also shown to have poor utility. However, since the Census Bureau had already committed to a different procedure, they had no option except to escalate their commitment. The result of such escalation is that the 2020 tabular data release offers neither privacy nor accuracy.

Keywords: Accuracy, Privacy, Census

Suggested Citation

Muralidhar, Krish and Ruggles, Steven, Escalation of Commitment: A Case Study of the United States Census Bureau Efforts to Implement Differential Privacy for the 2020 Decennial Census (Forthcoming in: In Proceedings of Privacy in Statistical Databases -PSD 2024) (July 21, 2024). Privacy in Statistical Databases. PSD 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer., Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4900884

Krish Muralidhar (Contact Author)

University of Oklahoma ( email )

307 W Brooks
Norman, OK 73019
United States

Steven Ruggles

University of Minnesota - Minneapolis ( email )

110 Wulling Hall
86 Pleasant St, S.E.
Minneapolis, MN 55455
United States

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