Journalist’s Resource published this great comic by Josh Neufeld, explaining the basic concepts behind differential privacy, the data collection method used to prevent bad actors from de-anonymizing the information gleaned from the 2020 Census.
The original source includes some other great resources on differential privacy, but since the comic itself is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, we’ve re-posted it here in full.
A brief introduction to differential privacy: A data protection plan for the 2020 census [Josh Neufeld / Journalist’s Resource]