New top story on Hacker News: Why can't you get the data used to create the Consumer Price Index (CPI)?

Why can't you get the data used to create the Consumer Price Index (CPI)?
17 by ErikAugust | 5 comments on Hacker News.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) measures inflation and, in the words of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, "directly affects hundreds of millions of Americans". I would have guessed the data used to construct the CPI would be open to everyone. But no, it appears to be unavailable and it is instead a black box due to rules of confidentiality. What is strange is, it appears much of the data is publicly available data. For example, 8% comes from e-commerce sites, the USPS public website, etc. If you browse through the categories, you can also see that almost all the data could be collected from public sources - APIs, websites, etc. So, does anyone know why this data cannot be obtained? Reference: https://ift.tt/3dLe4eu