
Hacking, Glitches, Disinformation: Why Experts Are Worried About the 2020 Census - cardamomo
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/us/hacking-glitches-disinformation-why-experts-are-worried-about-the-2020-census.html
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cardamomo
The gist of the article is that the Census Bureau is planning to rely less on
paper forms (prevalent for every census until 2010) so that it can reduce
costs and make the data collected easier to share with a range of federal
institutions.

> The government has ambitious plans to use new digital methods to collect
> data. But the Census Bureau has had to scale back testing of that technology
> because of inadequate funding — raising the risk of problems ranging from
> software glitches to cyberattacks.

HN readers are likely to imagine what sorts of challenges the Census Bureau is
likely to encounter. The article, however, ends with a non-technical issue
that is at the heart of the political and technological questions that have
plagued next year's census:

> The greatest risk to the census, former officials say, is that the public
> loses faith in the legitimacy of an independent institution at the core of
> American democracy — whether because of a crashed website, a partisan fight
> or a drumbeat of disinformation.

