Elements of Statistical Disclosure Control : Springer : 9780387951218 : 0387951210 : 01 Nov 2000 : Statistical disclosure control is the discipline that deals with producing statistical data that are safe enough to be released to external researchers. This book concentrates on the methodology of the area. It deals with both microdata (individual data) and tabular (aggregated) data. The book attempts to develop the theory from what can be called the paradigm of statistical confidentiality: to modify unsafe data in such a way that safe (enough) data emerge, with minimum information loss. This book discusses what safe data, are, how information loss can be measured, and how to modify the data in a (near) optimal way. Once it has been decided how to measure safety and information loss, the production of safe data from unsafe data is often a matter of solving an optimization problem. Several such problems are discussed in the book, and most of them turn out to be hard problems that can be s