9:45 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. Introductions and Discussion of Census Information Policies

Participants: Sam Hawala, Disclosure Avoidance Researcher & PORTIA Research Partner
Gerald Gates, Chief of the Policy Office
Paul Massell, Disclosure Avoidance Researcher
Phil Steel, Disclosure Avoidance Researcher
Eleanor Gerber, Leader of Questionnaire Design & Measurement Research Team 2

Key Discussion Points:
Participants introduced themselves and briefly described their roles at the Census Bureau: Mr. Gates - overseer of the Privacy Policy Committee, Ms. Gerber - trained Anthropologist, doing ethnographic research into the attitudes of respondents of data collection surveys, Mr.'s Hawala, Massell, and Steel - conducting research into statistical methodologies preventative of data disclosure

The discussion centered on a questionnaire sent by Prof. Nissenbaum & Timothy Weber preceding the visit. Topics included: Explicit and Implicit guidelines for the Bureau's handling of sensitive information; the procedures enacted to ensure confidentiality; employee and outsider authority to access sensitive information

The core rationale and underlying purpose of both the Decennial Population Survey and the Bureau itself; the channels of information flow articulated between the Bureau and other organizational entities; the relationship between the Bureau to the public The processes by which categories of information are added to existing surveys; the process by which new surveys are launched New Privacy/Confidentiality initiatives at the Census Bureau included: Data Stewardship Program - a new executive level committee aimed at reviewing the Bureau's policies towards protecting confidentiality of data. Tactics discussed included annual employee training concerning data handling and the Bureau's own research (particularly Ms. Gerber's work) on respondent attitudes toward privacy.

Reimbursable Project Acceptance Criteria - a new process for reviewing the Bureau's collection of data for other entities; more stringent attention is being paid to the sensitivity of the desired information, the external entity's reputation, and the proposed project's congruence with the Bureau's own mission before any such projects are launched

11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Statistical Research Division Seminar Series Privacy in Context - Prof. Helen Nissenbaum

Participants: Approx. 30 Bureau Employees from the Statistical Research Division The talk was simulcast on Closed Circuit Television to the 12 Census Bureau Regional Offices (Questions were fielded from Kansas City, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York)

Key Points of Discussion:
Prof. Nissenbaum presented on her theory of Privacy as Contextual Integrity, including: discussion of contexts as mezzo-level analysis (i.e. social, cultural, institutional level); informational norms, both norms of appropriateness and norms of flow; the operation of informational norms within contexts; how the practices of the Bureau's data collection might be understood as contexts.

Specific questions and comments addressed included: cultural/ethnic diversity and its effects on understandings of contexts; rate of differentiation between individual respondents and their attitudes about providing information to surveys; tactics employed by the Bureau (such as the hiring of enumerators indigenous to the geographic locations of data collection) to mitigate vast differences in individual understandings of context

12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Lunch with Disclosure Avoidance Research Team members Sam Hawala, Paul Massell, and Phil Steel

Discussion involved particular employee practices regarding interaction with sensitive information; incidents remembered by specific employees regarding data disclosure; level of access to sensitive information employees could exercise; techniques (both methodological and technological) employed by the Statistical Research Division to protect against the violation of data confidentiality; the technological situation of the Census Bureau, especially the location of the data with respect to databases, computer systems, and networks.

1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. Meeting with Tommy Wright, Office of the Chief

Discussion involved executive level initiatives sponsoring the Bureau's own research into privacy - specifically the importance lent by the Bureau to engendering willing respondent attitudes; the ability of Congress to effect control over the Bureau's undertaking via budgeting; the ability of race and ethnicity questions to prompt tension and debate; the underlying assumption of the Bureau of "having the right" to collect data from respondents; the Bureau's willingness to focus its energies on technical solutions to problematic areas (regarding disclosure/confidentiality)