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隐私保护何以失灵:2020年人口普查保密计划为何以及如何失败

When Privacy Protection Goes Wrong: How and Why the 2020 Census Confidentiality Program Failed
Journal of Economic Perspectives · 2024 · [{"name": "Steven Ruggles", "affiliation": ["University of Minnesota"]}]

中文摘要

美国人口普查局在2020年人口普查中实施了一项新的信息披露控制策略,对州以下每个地理单元(包括大都市区、城市和县)的每一项人口统计数据都故意加入误差。本文追溯了这一新程序不断演变的理由,并评估了2020年披露控制对数据质量的影响。人口普查局声称,2010年及更早人口普查采用的传统披露控制措施泄露了数百万美国人的机密回答。本文认为,这一说法缺乏依据,也没有证据表明任何人的回答遭到泄露。新的披露控制策略在没有明确收益的情况下引入了不必要的误差;事实上,新程序在保护机密性方面的实际效果可能还不如其所取代的旧程序。最后,本文就如何在未来人口普查中最大限度提高数据效用的同时将披露风险降至最低提出了建议。

Abstract

The U.S. Census Bureau implemented a new disclosure control strategy for the 2020 Census that adds deliberate error to every population statistic for every geographic unit smaller than a state, including metropolitan areas, cities, and counties. This article traces the evolving rationale for the new procedures and assesses the impact of the 2020 disclosure control on data quality. The Census Bureau argues that the traditional disclosure controls used for the 2010 and earlier censuses revealed the confidential responses of millions of Americans. I argue that this claim is unsupported, and that there is no evidence that anyone's responses were compromised. The new disclosure control strategies introduce unnecessary error with no clear benefit; in fact, the new procedures may actually be less effective for protecting confidentiality than the procedures they replaced. I conclude with recommendations for minimizing disclosure risk while maximizing data utility in future censuses.
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