Comment by m3047

Interesting article, but I don't fully agree that it means what people seem to think it means. Note that the author says "People who were using Census data to actually reconstruct records could no longer do so. Demographers admitted that this was common practice. It's also an open secret that this was done by political operatives as part of gerrymandering efforts."

I do surprising things with math on occasion, but I'm not a licensed statistician. I don't know what they do in private, but in public statisticians, or people trying to sound like them, seem to fool around with horseshoes and hand grenades a lot.

The Census Bureau doesn't just do the decennial census. For instance due to a convoluted jurisdictional dispute (near as I can tell), I ended up on the agricultural census for several years (until they figured out I wasn't trying to make a profit).

I have concerns about data privacy, but I'm more concerned with private entities trading in it and data integrity. I'm extremely concerned about the misuse of privately produced databases, especially by government functions. I get the impression that for a lot of folks the notion that private databases could be biased in the favor of the provider's interests in order to get favorable treatment from their customers or punish their detractors seems to be an "unknown unknown". We're veering into serious Dunning-Kruger territory attempting to use phone numbers, email addresses, and biometrics for identity / KYC. At this very moment the FCC is getting ready to order telecomms providers collect PII for people buying ALL phones, so they won't have any excuse not to sell that to all comers /s.

Private armies are regulated in the United States, and private data brokers should be similarly regulated for largely congruent reasons.