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Will state population totals continue to reflect actual reported totals, exempted from disclosure avoidance methods?
Yes. As always, state population totals will reflect the actual reported population numbers as enumerated in the census. The totals determine congres...
How is a differentially private system different from the Census Bureau’s traditional disclosure avoidance techniques?
The disclosure avoidance techniques that were used in the 2010 Census and in the American Community Survey rely on “swapping” characteristics in the ...
Could external attackers know whether they’ve correctly reidentified individuals in Census data even if they don’t have access to confidential census records?
Yes, if they have access to additional outside data sources or perform some minimal fieldwork to verify their results. This is...
Why is the U.S. Census Bureau moving to a new privacy protection system?
A new disclosure avoidance system (DAS) is needed to defend against new threats posed by today’s technology: growing computing power, advances ...
When will the Census Bureau apply differential privacy to other surveys and data products?
The 2020 DAS is optimized for the 2020 Census and cannot be directly applied to other survey or data products. However, the scientific and technical ...
How will the Disclosure Avoidance System work for other 2020 Census products?
TopDown Algorithm as designed can provide consistency between redistricting data and other 2020 Census data products, such as the Demographic Profile...
What is differential privacy?
Differential privacy is the scientific term for a method that adds “statistical noise” to the tables we publish in a way that protects ea...
What harms could arise if the basic demographic data collected in the decennial census is exposed?
Data stewardship is a comprehensive framework designed to protect information over the course of the information life cycle, from collection to disse...
How did the Census Bureau involve data users in the design of the Disclosure Avoidance System (DAS)?
The U.S. Census Bureau’s Data Stewardship Executive Policy Committee (DSEP) relies on input from a variety of sources when making decisions about the...
How will data users be able to evaluate the output of the final 2020 Disclosure Avoidance System design?
We are developing a set of metrics that will allow us to measure and share progress as we iteratively improve the 2020 DAS over the course of 2020. W...
What is disclosure avoidance?
Disclosure avoidance is the process of making changes to data for the purpose of protecting a respondent’s privacy and confidentiality in publi...
What is data swapping?
Data swapping is a disclosure avoidance method that “swaps” data between households in different locations that have similar characterist...
What law requires the Census Bureau to protect against disclosure of my Census responses?
The U.S. Census Bureau is required by law to protect respondent confidentiality at every stage of the data lifecycle.
What other measures are you taking to protect privacy during the transition to a full, differentially private disclosure avoidance system?
While we transition to the new privacy system, we are taking stock of all of the statistical products we produce. We are suspending publication of ce...
How will the American people verify the calculations behind the Census Bureau’s differentially private data?
The Census Bureau will release the exact software used to compute the differentially private publication data, all of the components associated with ...
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