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SUMMARY:Deploying Differential Privacy for the 2020 Census of Population a
 nd Housing - Simson L. Garfinkel\, Senior Computer Scientist for Confident
 iality and Data Access\, U.S. Census Bureau
DTSTART:20190723T130000Z
DTEND:20190723T140000Z
UID:TALK126595@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Alexander Vetterl
DESCRIPTION:When differential privacy was created more than a decade ago\,
  the motivating example was statistics published by an official statistics
  agency. In theory there is no difference between theory and practice\, bu
 t in practice there is.\n\nIn attempting to transition differential privac
 y from the theory to practice\, and in particular for the 2020 Census of P
 opulation and Housing\, the U.S. Census Bureau has encountered many challe
 nges unanticipated by differential privacy's creators. Many of these chall
 enges had less to do with the mathematics of differential privacy and more
  to do with operational requirements that differential privacy’s creator
 s had not discussed in their writings. These challenges included obtaining
  qualified personnel and a suitable computing environment\, the difficulty
  of accounting for all uses of the confidential data\, the lack of release
  mechanisms that align with the needs of data users\, the expectation on t
 he part of data users that they will have access to micro-data\, the diffi
 culty in setting the value of the privacy-loss parameter\, ε (epsilon)\, 
 and the lack of tools and trained individuals to verify the correctness of
  differential privacy\, and push-back from same members of the data user c
 ommunity.\n\nAddressing these concerns required developing a novel hierarc
 hical algorithm that makes extensive use of a high-performance commercial 
 optimizer\; transitioning the computing environment to the cloud\; educati
 ng insiders about differential privacy\; engaging with academics\, data us
 ers\, and the general public\; and redesigning both data flows inside the 
 Census Bureau and some of the final data publications to be in line with t
 he demands of formal privacy.\n\nBio:\nSimson Garfinkel is the Senior Comp
 uter Scientist for Confidentiality and Data Access at the US Census Bureau
 . He holds seven US patents and has published more than 50 research articl
 es in computer security and digital forensics. He is a fellow of the Assoc
 iation for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and E
 lectronics Engineers (IEEE)\, and a member of the National Association of 
 Science Writers. His most recent book is The Computer Book\, which feature
 s 250 chronologically arranged milestones in the history of computing. As 
 a journalist\, he has written about science\, technology\, and technology 
 policy in the popular press since 1983\, and has won several national jour
 nalism awards.\n\nGarfinkel received three Bachelor of Science degrees fro
 m MIT in 1987\, a Master's of Science in Journalism from Columbia Universi
 ty in 1988\, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT in 2005.\n\nhttps://
 simson.net/bio/\n\n
LOCATION:LT2\, Computer Laboratory\, William Gates Building
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