Xenophobia and Selling Data

Census Confidentiality? The Check is in the Mail
Opinion Editorial By Dave Kopel
Some promises shouldn’t be taken seriously. “The check is in the mail,” or “Of course I’ll respect you in the morning,” or “I won’t raise taxes.” To that list should be added, “Your answers to census questions will remain completely confidential.”
Already this census season, many of homeless people have refused to divulge personal information to census takers. Some of the homeless have fears that their personal plight will be revealed to far-away relatives. That intuitive distrust of the Census Bureau may be valid.
During the 1940 census, American citizens of Japanese descent dutifully noted their forebears’ ethnicity on the census form. Those Japanese-Americans believed the Census Bureau assurance that their answers would remain secret. But in 1942 the federal government began rounding up citizens who were of Japanese descent and imprisoning them in concentration camps. How did the Justice Department know where to find Japanese-Americans? The Census Bureau told them.
The bureau kept its promise of confidentiality, it never disclosed any individual’s name and address. Instead, the bureau told the Justice Department’s concentration camp office when census tracts (small neighborhoods) had high proportions of citizens with Japanese ancestry. Knowing which neighborhoods to concentrate on, the concentration camp officials descended for house-to-house searches.
Today illegal or recently legalized aliens may fear deportation. If in the late 1990s the United States suffered an unexpected resurgence of racism and xenophobia, how would the Department of Justice know which neighborhoods to search for illegal aliens? The Census Bureau would probably hand over lists of neighborhoods with high proportions of low-income People with Hispanic or Caribbean ancestry. It is little wonder that many, recent immigrants refuse to cooperate with the census.
When other government agencies call for assistance, the Census Bureau may not even keep its word about the sanctity of data on individual households. During World War I the bureau turned over the name-and-address lists to the Justice Department for use in the search for draft resisters.
Even Americans who don’t fear persecution or prosecution may be concerned about census confidentiality. The Census Bureau is already advertising its new commercial product that will. help marketers and credit bureaus zero in on individual households. The TIGER (Topical Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing) system will “include demographic data by census block.” (A census block comprises 200 or fewer people.)
Names and addresses will be omitted, but most of the other “confidential” census data will be divulged — including those on marital status, health and income.
Credit bureaus such as TRW, which already have vast computer files on nearly everyone, will be able to use TIGER to find out a good deal more. For example, the census long form asks how many cars a household owns.
TRW could buy the data for a census block and find. that only one household in the block owns three cars. As a credit-reporting service, TIM might already have a file on a particular household in the area that 64 taken out three car loan. TRW, by matching this data with the TIGER data, could then use “confidential” census information to learn about the income, dependents, house size, race ethnicity and marital status of members of the household.
The Census Bureau, since it did not disclose anyone’s name and address, would claim that it had kept its vow of confidentiality.
The federal government has gone into the business of helping commercial enterprises find out. intimate personal data, such as the fact that an unmarried couple is living together. The legality of the Census Bureau’s operating as a reporting service for businesses is dubious.
The Constitution authorizes a census for the purpose of congressional apportionment and for direct. taxation (a tax based on the population of a state). For those constitutional purposes, a simple name and address questionnaire would suffice.

http://www.i2i.org/main/article.php?article_id=504

If you’re worried, just google your name. Now you really have something to worry about.

Does the Bureau honor Confidentiality

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/289008

The Census Bureau assures us that ‘your confidentiality is protected’ because Title 13 requires the Census Bureau to keep all information about you and all other respondents strictly confidential,’ but those assurances are relatively useless
Despite the $350 million ad campaign for the 2010 Census urging individuals to ‘tell your story,’ many — particularly minorities and illegal immigrants who are traditionally believed the be the most under counted — will be non-compliant because of fears, some of which are over-hyped, that the information provided can reportedly be used against them.
Those fears are not completely unfounded. Widespread non-compliance, particularly among those most likely to be discriminated against by a majority, may not be strictly rooted in the ‘ignorance’ the ads are designed to overcome.
The most recent example of the U.S. government breaching census trust occurred in 2002 and 2003, when the Census Bureau handed over information that had been collected about Arab-Americans to Homeland Security.
In 1943, data from the 1940 Census was turned over to the War Department and used to intern Japanese, Italian and German Americans once the U.S. became involved in World War II. The Census data was used to monitor and persecute others who escaped internment.
An unspecified threat against President Franklin Roosevelt in 1943 resulted in the Census Bureau releasing the name, address, age, sex, citizenship status and occupation of Japanese Americans in the Washington D.C. area to the Treasury Department.
I’ve run across this info on a few websites. I’m undetermined as to the accuracy of this info and whether it is another cases of everybody on the web copying the same misinformation.

All Goods Things, and Others, Must End

No more binders! Translates to no more work. Did they really pull it off, complete enumeration before Memorial Day – at least in my neck of the woods – and I have no idea where that is, you hear that U.S. Census Officials.
And no money.
Doesn’t mean the machines are reading the data, we’re just done collecting it. What will I do each day? Worse yet what will I blog about? I can devote myself to house hunting with its lack of confidentiality and no oath of office.
I had some qualms about the oath of office. Defend the United States against everything – even aliens from outer space? During the Vietnam era I could not have sworn to defend this country under all conditions. Why is that level of devotion necessary for an enumerator. Do postal workers have to take that oath?
And the god part made me choke – does this country not yet acknowledge diversity of religious beliefs?
So if one doesn’t accept the god part, does that negate the oath?