alt Hacker NewsAn earlier article on the same blog had some very useful information on how easily the aggregated census data from 2010 (before differential privacy) could be used to reconstruct real data for individuals: https://desfontain.es/blog/us-census-reconstruction-attack.h...
I am personally convinced that the reason noise infusion was banned was because powerful people were already reconstructing individual data from census for the purpose of gerrymandering, and they wanted to continue gerrymandering.
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tgv • today at 7:10 AM
Or worse. It allows anyone to build really targeted data sets. Insurance companies would love such data, and many of those will use them without scruples.
thomasahle • today at 10:46 AM
Why do you need individual data for gerrymandering? Don't you only need area level?
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I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on re-indentification a while back related to a research journal I was helping with and some presentations I was giving. One of the things I ran across was how easy it was to de-anonymize healthcare records from way less information than one might assume.