How the U.S. Census Bureau's work to improve data privacy can be a lesson for businesses

Check out all the Smart Security Summit on-demand sessions here.

Americans' concerns about data privacy are on the rise. In the absence of any sweeping legislation at the national level, such as Europe's GDPR laws, Americans feel weary and vulnerable to data collection by both companies and the government.

According to Pew Research, 81% say the risks outweigh the benefits of collecting data from businesses, and 61% think the same when it comes to collecting government data. And it's not just talk: 52% say they decided not to use a good or service specifically because of data collection and privacy issues.

Federal lawmakers are working to address this issue. In 2021, 27 privacy bills were passed by states aiming to reign in the loose handling and sale of personal data by the tech industry. So far in 2022, Utah and Connecticut have joined California, Colorado and Virginia in passing their own national data privacy laws, which will take effect in 2023.

"One of the important aspects of data privacy is that privacy is contextual," said Os Keyes, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Human-Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington, who studies data ethics, medical AI, facial recognition, gender and sexuality.

Event

On-Demand Smart Security Summit

Learn about the essential role of AI and ML in cybersecurity and industry-specific case studies. Watch the on-demand sessions today.

look here

Data, Keyes says, can quickly be anonymized when put in context with other data about you. One set of data combined with another from a different source can reveal a lot, quite quickly, and sometimes it can get dangerous.

"All you have to do is be able to stitch together existing datasets," Keyes said.

Government agencies, like the U.S. Census Bureau, are taking a closer look at their data privacy practices and responsibilities. Ahead of the 2030 census, the Bureau opened a comment period this year for experts like Keyes to weigh in on its data anonymization efforts and advise the agency on how to improve beforecollecting the next decade of data. .

Test datasets to see what works and find what doesn't

Keyes and his colleague Abraham (Abie) Flaxman, associate professor of health metrics and global health science at the University of Washington, set out to test a major hypothesis for the Census Bureau: Could transgender teens be unmasked and identified using simulated datasets?

The unfortunate answer, the two found, was yes. Using the Central Census Bureau's data anonymization approach...