Imprisonment? deportation? these are petty things.

The serious danger is polarization and radicalization, turning people against each other, suppressing voices of reason. The ensuing chaos could help pull off another January 6th, only successful. Gerrymandering is one approach, but with more detailed data more interesting things may become possible.

> so they can divide them up by arbitrary criteria and do with those groups as they please

You mean like by race, gender, and sexual orientation, and using statistical analysis to portray a group of oppressors vs. oppressed, perpetrators and victims? Exactly what was happening via official public policy for the last 4 years while the progressives cheered it on?

Alternative take that was expressed in the other post on this: census data users found DP extremely hard to work with, and viewed it as an imposed solution from the ivory tower. I wonder if any user could chime in on this.

Doesn't this mean such data analysis can be used by anyone against anyone else? This does not just mean one political group can do this analysis, any political group or foreign power can make use of the data if it is not protected using differential privacy. Has the military weighed in on this? Seems like the data could be used to attack police forces, cities, states, demographic groups, groups of almost any kind. It could be used to identify military forces, say those at secret bases. Turning off the privacy protections seems like tearing down a fence; makes it easier to take your horse out for a ride, but also makes it easier for the wolves to get in.