Or maybe that was the coffee-whiskey that was no longer in the tumbler; was the glass half empty?

The demographer’s refrain was particularly grating, “there is not a single documented case of anyone outside the Census Bureau revealing the responses of a particular identified person using data from the decennial census.”

Well sure, because hacking is a business, for the money, not for the glory, and pay is for the data, not for the documentation.

“Eff it, I’ll do it,” Gloxman said aloud, to no one. It was late Saturday night, the kids were asleep. He sipped the remaining whiskey-coffee contemplatively.

Snuggles was a compelling target. He looked cuddly, but after his bluster about the implausibility of an attacker using census tabulations to uncover characteristics of a particular individual, success would have a poetic justice.

On the other hand, he was a real person with real feelings. He _was_ a paid witness for the lingering, far-right conspiracy to derail the 2020 US Census. He had penned page upon page of wrongful analysis. But what if he was just confused, and not malicious?

Would perhaps a less aggressive approach be more productive? On the other hand, Gloxman reflected, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

The coffee-whiskey was gone, the glass was not half empty anymore. One particular mistruth echoed in Gloxman’s mind, “Without single years of age, there is no possibility for successful re-identification of reconstructed data.”

C H A P T E R T W O

Gloxman started the re-identification attack just like he would start a scientific study, with a websearch.

Snuggles, it turned out, was not a particularly private person---his Wikipedia page proved it: he was born on May 8 in 1955, making him 54 years young on census day, 2010. He married in 1994, to another academic, and they had two daughters (citation needed).

Gloxman made a note about the family details but put them aside. Snuggles might be a public person, but his wife didn’t publish her birthdate on Wikipedia, and the kids deserved their privacy, too, right?

Maybe the professor should pour another drink and find evening entertainment on Netflix instead of http://data.census.gov. But Gloxman wasn’t ready to quit.

The Census Bureau has carved up the United States into “Census Blocks”, over 10 million of them, and they look like city blocks, roughly. Which one was Snuggles and family living in back in 2010?

Even people with their birthdate on their Wikipedia page don’t always publish their home address, but public data goes deep.

Gloxman turned to a database of campaign contributions at http://fec.gov. As suspected, Dr. Snuggles was the sort of intellectual who had given generously to political campaigns over the years.

Also as suspected, the FEC had carefully documented Snuggles’s address for each of his generous donations. Where his family lived on 2010 census day was recorded publicly for anyone who chose to look.

With an address in hand, Gloxman found the census block easily with the http://tigerweb.geo.census.gov search tool.

C H A P T E R T H R E E

In 2010, the Snuggles household lived in a Hennepin County census block with 69 other people.

A two word summary of the racial and ethnic mix of the neighborhood might read “mostly white”.

It was not all white on Sunggles’s block, however, as census data revealed in excruciating detail; 7 Black people, 3 Latinx, 2 Asians, and 1 Native American shared the block with the 60 people who reported their race and ethnicity as “Not Hispanic or Latino, white alone”.

Gloxman’s coffee-whiskey had sublimated into a massive headache; was this the privacy violation already? It was too easy.

“Talk it out,” said Gloxman to no one. “Snuggles has a household of 4, his kids are probably in their teens, that probably discloses his race and ethnicity: non-Hispanic white.”

Did it say anything about Snuggles’s racial or ethnic identity that on Wikipedia? Gloxman didn’t think so.

“Oh eff,” said Gloxman to no one again, “did I just prove that the Census Bureau broke the law?”

C H A P T E R F O U R

Checking things over carefully wasn’t for Saturday night. Gloxman slept.

Sunday morning was for checking things carefully. And coffee. Sunday morning was for coffee without whiskey.

Was the address right? Was the census block copied correctly to http://data.census.gov? Did it still seem like the Snuggles family race and ethnicity was perhaps being published in a census table, in violation of Title 13 of the US Code?