SafeTab-P: Disclosure Avoidance for the 2020 Census Detailed Demographic and Housing Characteristics File A (Detailed DHC-A)

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Haney, Sam, Berghel, Skye, Carlson, Bayard, Cumings-Menon, Ryan, Hartman, Luke, Hay, Michael, Machanavajjhala, Ashwin, Miklau, Gerome, Pai, Amritha, Rajpal, Simran, Pujol, David, Sexton, William, Shrestha, Ruchit, Simmons-Marengo, Daniel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Haney, Sam
Berghel, Skye
Carlson, Bayard
Cumings-Menon, Ryan
Hartman, Luke
Hay, Michael
Machanavajjhala, Ashwin
Miklau, Gerome
Pai, Amritha
Rajpal, Simran
Pujol, David
Sexton, William
Shrestha, Ruchit
Simmons-Marengo, Daniel
author_facet Haney, Sam
Berghel, Skye
Carlson, Bayard
Cumings-Menon, Ryan
Hartman, Luke
Hay, Michael
Machanavajjhala, Ashwin
Miklau, Gerome
Pai, Amritha
Rajpal, Simran
Pujol, David
Sexton, William
Shrestha, Ruchit
Simmons-Marengo, Daniel
contents This article describes the disclosure avoidance algorithm that the U.S. Census Bureau used to protect the Detailed Demographic and Housing Characteristics File A (Detailed DHC-A) of the 2020 Census. The tabulations contain statistics (counts) of demographic characteristics of the entire population of the United States, crossed with detailed races and ethnicities at varying levels of geography. The article describes the SafeTab-P algorithm, which is based on adding noise drawn to statistics of interest from a discrete Gaussian distribution. A key innovation in SafeTab-P is the ability to adaptively choose how many statistics and at what granularity to release them, depending on the size of a population group. We prove that the algorithm satisfies a well-studied variant of differential privacy, called zero-concentrated differential privacy (zCDP). We then describe how the algorithm was implemented on Tumult Analytics and briefly outline the parameterization and tuning of the algorithm.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_01472
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SafeTab-P: Disclosure Avoidance for the 2020 Census Detailed Demographic and Housing Characteristics File A (Detailed DHC-A)
Haney, Sam
Berghel, Skye
Carlson, Bayard
Cumings-Menon, Ryan
Hartman, Luke
Hay, Michael
Machanavajjhala, Ashwin
Miklau, Gerome
Pai, Amritha
Rajpal, Simran
Pujol, David
Sexton, William
Shrestha, Ruchit
Simmons-Marengo, Daniel
Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
This article describes the disclosure avoidance algorithm that the U.S. Census Bureau used to protect the Detailed Demographic and Housing Characteristics File A (Detailed DHC-A) of the 2020 Census. The tabulations contain statistics (counts) of demographic characteristics of the entire population of the United States, crossed with detailed races and ethnicities at varying levels of geography. The article describes the SafeTab-P algorithm, which is based on adding noise drawn to statistics of interest from a discrete Gaussian distribution. A key innovation in SafeTab-P is the ability to adaptively choose how many statistics and at what granularity to release them, depending on the size of a population group. We prove that the algorithm satisfies a well-studied variant of differential privacy, called zero-concentrated differential privacy (zCDP). We then describe how the algorithm was implemented on Tumult Analytics and briefly outline the parameterization and tuning of the algorithm.
title SafeTab-P: Disclosure Avoidance for the 2020 Census Detailed Demographic and Housing Characteristics File A (Detailed DHC-A)
topic Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.01472