Notes from the Electronic Cottage 5/7/20: COVID-19 and The Census

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

There are two very big things going on in our world right now: the Covid-19 pandemic and the US Census count. What might those two things have in common? The answer is the importance of trust on the part of those involved – trust that electronic efforts to track the spread of the disease will not compromise people’s privacy, and trust that the Census can generate information of great importance for the country as a whole without revealing sensitive data about individuals in the process. Here’s why there can be a problem and why that problem makes lots of people nervous.