Buying Private Data At Auction: The Sensitive Surveyor'S Problem

In this letter, we survey some recent work on what we call the sensitive surveyor's problem. A curious data analyst wishes to survey a population to obtain an accurate estimate of a simple population statistic: for example, the fraction of the population testing positive for syphilis. However, because this is a statistic over sensitive data, individuals experience a cost for participating in the survey as a function of their loss in privacy. Agents must be compensated for this cost, and moreover, are strategic agents and will mis-report their cost if doing so is beneficial for them. The goal of the surveyor is to manage the inevitable tradeoff between the cost of the survey, and the accuracy of its results.