A holistic approach to confidentiality assurance in statistical data

Abstract

This paper describes research at the US Census Bureau on the public's perceptions of confidentiality and privacy in the release of statistical data products and new tools to access them. With the use of the Internet to disseminate data, the US Census Bureau recognized that the public would not only have better access to statistical data, they would be more aware of the potential threats to confidentiality in data tabulations and microdata. Some of these threats are real and much research has been done to address them. However, much less is understood about perceptions of threats that may not be real. The paper reports on possible negative perceptions about data products, research to measure these perceptions, and activities, such as targeted messages, to address them.