Professor Colm O'Muircheartaigh Discusses Whether Census Data Should Be More Private

Harris Public Policy Professor Colm O'Muircheartaigh was featured in Science, discussing the rationale for the U.S. Census Bureau's first-time use of a mathematical concept called differential privacy that aims to increase privacy of data but may prevent effective interaction with the data by those who study it.

"I'm not surprised that someone has reconstructed the fact that there are 45-year-old white men living in a particular block," said O'Muircheartaigh. "But that kind of information is neither very interesting or useful." 

Full coverage available at Science.