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<p>The Article Database Reconstruction is Not So Easy and Is Different from Reidentification, by Krish Muralidhar and Josep Domingo-Ferrer, is an extended attack on the decision of the U.S. Census Bureau to turn its back on legacy statistical disclosure limitation techniques and instead use a bespoke algorithm based on differential privacy to protect the published data products of the Census Bureau’s 2020 Census of Population and Housing (henceforth referred to as the 2020 Census). This response explains why differential privacy was the only realistic choice for protecting sensitive data collected for the 2020 Census. However, differential privacy has a social cost: it requires that practitioners admit that there is inherently a trade-off between the utility of published official statistics and the privacy loss of those whose data are collected under a pledge of confidentiality.</p>
</abstract>

The Article Database Reconstruction is Not So Easy and Is Different from Reidentification, by Krish Muralidhar and Josep Domingo-Ferrer, is an extended attack on the decision of the U.S. Census Bureau to turn its back on legacy statistical disclosure limitation techniques and instead use a bespoke algorithm based on differential privacy to protect the published data products of the Census Bureau’s 2020 Census of Population and Housing (henceforth referred to as the 2020 Census). This response explains why differential privacy was the only realistic choice for protecting sensitive data collected for the 2020 Census. However, differential privacy has a social cost: it requires that practitioners admit that there is inherently a trade-off between the utility of published official statistics and the privacy loss of those whose data are collected under a pledge of confidentiality.

Comment to Muralidhar and Domingo-Ferrer (2023) – Legacy Statistical Disclosure Limitation Techniques Were Not An Option for the 2020 US Census of Population And Housing

Journal of Official Statistics

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

The Article Database Reconstruction is Not So Easy and Is Different from Reidentification, by Krish Muralidhar and Josep Domingo-Ferrer, is an extended attack...

Comment to Muralidhar and Domingo-Ferrer (2023) – Legacy Statistical Disclosure Limitation Techniques Were Not An Option for the 2020 US Census of Population And Housing

Published Online: Sep 07, 2023

Page range: 399 - 410

Received: Jan 01, 2023

Accepted: May 01, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jos-2023-0018

Keywords
Differential privacy, 2020 U.S. Census, Statistical disclosure limitation, Statistical disclosure avoidance, topdown algorithm

© 2023 Simson Garfinkel, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Comment to Muralidhar and Domingo-Ferrer (2023) – Legacy Statistical Disclosure Limitation Techniques Were Not An Option for the 2020 US Census of Population And Housing

Published Online: Sep 07, 2023

Page range: 399 - 410

Received: Jan 01, 2023

Accepted: May 01, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jos-2023-0018

KeywordsDifferential privacy, 2020 U.S. Census, Statistical disclosure limitation, Statistical disclosure avoidance, topdown algorithm

© 2023 Simson Garfinkel, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
Differential privacy, 2020 U.S. Census, Statistical disclosure limitation, Statistical disclosure avoidance, topdown algorithm