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Huh, the US Census Bureau purposely fudges the location data in the census to protect people’s privacy.

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M
Mike

They did this in previous decennial census but with different technology. There's a landing page with links to a briefing on the USCB website. They are transparent about the process:

https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/decade/2020/planning-management/process/disclosure-avoidance.html

Tim Erskine

Don't they know there's a ton of money to be made by selling that information?!?

Actually, I applaud their efforts as it turns out that IDing somebody from just date of birth, ZIP code, and sex is pretty accurate: https://crypto.stanford.edu/~pgolle/papers/census.pdf

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