An American Privacy Emergency
A group of computer science experts, led by Cynthia Dwork, is protesting a U.S. government directive that restricts the use of modern privacy-preserving techniques like differential privacy in federal data. The experts argue the move is politically motivated and undermines scientific progress in data confidentiality.
Why it matters
The directive threatens the integrity and privacy of future U.S. Census data, sparking a conflict between political agendas and scientific data standards.
Scott’s foreword: Cynthia Dwork is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard, and a pioneer in the fields of differential privacy and algorithmic fairness. On my recent travels to the SigmaWest science camp and then STOC, there was much talk about a recent Trump administration action that would ban not only differential privacy, but essentially all modern techniques for preserving privacy in large datasets, for example in the 2030 US Census. I realize that many of us have “outrage fatigue,” but this particular outrage hits extremely close to home for the CS theory community. So when Cynthia approached me at STOC to propose a guest post on the issue, of course I said yes. The post that she sent me, below, is cosigned by many other leaders in the field.
The article frames the government action as a political attack on science, reflecting the perspective of the academic community.
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