Huh, the US Census Bureau purposely fudges the location data in the census to protect people’s privacy.
Advertise here with Carbon Ads
This site is made possible by member support. 💞
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
Beloved by 86.47% of the web.
Comments 2
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
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
If you feel like this comment goes against the grain of the community guidelines or is otherwise inappropriate, please let me know and I will take a look at it.
This thread is closed for new comments & replies. Thanks to everyone for participating!