Census Bureau Dodges Challenge to Controversial Privacy Tool

WAKA Action 8 News,
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by WAKA Action 8 News

FILE- In this file image from video provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, a sign language interpreter, lower left, signs for acting director of the U.S. Census Bureau Ron Jarmin, who is speaking off camera, as a graphic showing the U.S. population as of April 1, 2020, is displayed during a virtual news conference. When U.S. Census Bureau workers couldn't find out any information about some households after repeatedly mailing them questionnaire reminders and sending census takers to knock on their doors, the statisticians turned to an obscure, last-resort statistical technique known as “imputation.” Less than 1% of households were counted using the technique during the 2020 census. But some conservative political groups are questioning it, potentially laying a foundation for legal challenges to the data that will ultimately be used for drawing congressional and legislative districts. (U.S. Census Bureau via AP)

The U.S. Census Bureau has dodged a challenge for now to its use of a controversial statistical method aimed at keeping people’s data private in the numbers used for redrawing congressional and legislative districts after federal judges refused to stop the technique’s implementation. A panel of three federal judges in Alabama on Tuesday rejected the state of Alabama’s request for a preliminary injunction to halt the Census Bureau from using the method, differential privacy. The decision in federal court in Opelika, Alabama, allows the Census Bureau, for now, to proceed toward its goal of releasing the redistricting data in mid-August.

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