Will Your Answers To the Census Stay Private?

Hugh Pickens writes "James Bovard writes in the Christian Science Monitor that Americans are told that information gathered in the census will never be used against them and the House of Representatives, in a Census Awareness Month resolution passed March 3, proclaimed that 'the data obtained from the census are protected under United States privacy laws.' Unfortunately, thousands of Americans who trusted the Census Bureau in the past lost their freedom as a result. In the 1940 Census, the Census Bureau loudly assured people that their responses would be kept confidential. Within four days of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Census Bureau had produced a report listing the Japanese-American population in each county on the West Coast. The Census Bureau's report helped the US Army round up more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans for concentration camps (later renamed 'internment centers'). In 2003-04, the Census Bureau provided the Department of Homeland Security with a massive cache of information on how many Arab Americans lived in each ZIP Code around the nation, and which country they originated from — information that could have made it far easier to carry out the type of mass roundup that some conservatives advocated. 'Instead of viewing census critics as conspiracy theorists, the nation's political leaders should recognize how their policies have undermined public faith in government,' writes Bovard. 'All the census really needs to know is how many people live at each address. Citizens should refuse to answer any census question except for the number of residents.'"

Comments

There are no other questions

[guruevi]

I got the census papers. Besides the obvious: what's your name, race and address there are no other questions. I can lie about race if I wanted to because it's saying which race you consider yourself to be part of. I'm not a US citizen, yet I consider myself part of one of the races on the list. If you're afraid you're going to be corralled up, you could do the same thing, say you are "Other" or whatever is closest to your skin color (African-American/Negro (yes that's one of the options on there) for anyone not-white and not-native american)

All other questions (SSN, birth date, birth place) are not part of the census so if anyone asks they are not acting on behalf of the census office.

Re:There are no other questions

[C0R1D4N]

There is no longer a short form and long form. Now there is only one form, which is pretty much what the short form was. The long form has been replaced by the American Community Survey which goes out to roughly 3 million random people I think every year though it may be every other year. FWIW the census is a huge boon to our descendants for genealogical purposes. My mother is a professional genealogist and makes great use of the older census data to help people find their great great grandparents and whatnot.

Just the number of residents?

[Thinine]

Perhaps in 1790 that's all the census needed to know (that and how may slaves you owned), but it's a far different situation now. Socioeconomic and ethnic data is important in determining the types of services various areas need and plays an important part in know just who an "American" really is. As an aside, the census had nothing to do with the Japanese internment during WWII. At most it made calculating the number of Japanese-Americans easier, allowing the round up to be more accurate. Maybe. Given how easy it is to separate people by obvious ethnic ancestry, the round up would have occurred any way. Besides which, it's not as if either of scenarios mentioned in the OP actually provided anything more than numbers. They didn't provide addresses, names, or any actual personal information. Merely the number who marked a certain ethnicity in a certain county. So yes, these people are still just paranoid.

Re:Just the number of residents?

[cmiller173]

Perhaps in 1790 that's all the census needed to know (that and how may slaves you owned), but it's a far different situation now.

Then amend the constitution to empower the government to collect more than an enumeration.

Article I Section 2 - The House

... The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. ...

Article I Section 8 - Powers of Congress

... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Aggregate data = No privacy

[crow]

They say that they won't release your information for something like 85 years, but they do release aggregate data. In the 2000 census, there were complaints that it was possible to determine individual answers from the aggregate data because they were releasing data for very small areas. I think it was by Zip+4, which narrows typically narrows it down to fewer than ten houses.

For me, I'm not concerned about the privacy, but I take offense at being asked to identify as being of a specific race. Whatever happened to the Great American Melting Pot?

Not to defend the US government...

[Enry]

But:

1) Saying that census data will 'never be used against you' and 'are protected by US privacy laws' is nowhere near the same thing.
2) The NY Times article about Arab Americans in each ZIP code was using publicly available data from the census. As with medical records, the data used by DHS was deidentified.

So in the end, I have faith that the answers I give will stay private, though I understand that information that identify me as a community will be available - that's one of the points of the census!

Privacy Act of 1974

[BlueBoxSW.com]

Yeah, we did a lot of crazy things in the 40's. Misuse of census data, treatment of japanese americans, tuskegee airmen.

What the @ssholes who are spouting this propaganda forget is there ARE privacy laws in place to prevent misuse of data.

It IS illegal to do now in ways it WASN'T then.

Re:You know what's really sad?

[Wyatt Earp]

"Women used to be chattel, we had slaves, corporations had private armies that could kill striking union members with impunity, young children were forced to work twelve-hour shifts in factories and mines, American Indians were slaughtered by roving army units and bands of vigilantes, mob lynchings were commonplace, college was available only to the very rich, antibiotics and blood transfusion hadn't been invented yet, and so on. Heck, at the outset, only white male landowners could vote."

Thanks for that People's History rant, but it isn't true.

Women in the US were never "chattel", sure they couldn't vote for a while but they could own property, divorce, have a job, own land and pay taxes they sure got to pay taxes. The middle and upper class Southern woman all but pushed the Southern society into the Civil War and shamed the men into volunteering to go to war.

Some states had slaves, some Indian Tribes had slaves, not everyone in the United States did and at the time many countries had slavery or serfdom.

Corporations did hire some private security forces, they they weren't "armies" anymore than the striking workers were "revolutionary vanguards".

Child labor sucked, no doubt about that.

"American Indians were slaughtered by roving army units and bands of vigilantes". Sand Creek is the only instance of this where there was a real "slaughter" of civilians by "roving army units". In the course of the Great Plains and Southwest Indian Wars from 1859-1900 there were roughly 13,500 American Indian fighters and never more than 10,000 US Army and Marine Corps personnel in the theatre, in combat the casualty rates were about 1:1.5 in favor of the US Army. The Indian Wars were not great slaughters and its insulting to the memory of the soldiers and warriors who fought on both sides to call it that.

Re:Useful to whom? The racists who care about skin

[Mr. Slippery]

Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act. Democrats were for continued segregation

I mentioned neither Republicans nor Democrats. Progressivism, both big- and -small p versions, cuts across party lines: Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican, Woodrow Wilson was a Democrat.

However, you're simply wrong about the major parties and the Civil Rights Act. Democrat LBJ pushed the 1964 Civil Rights act through Congress, after Democrat JFK introduced it, and a majority of both Democratic and Republican Representatives and Senators voted for it. The split was strictly a North-South one. ("South", here, being states once under the control of the terrorist group that styled itself the "Confederate States of America".)

Both Southern Democrats and Southern Republicans were opposed to it, and Northern Democrats and Northern Republicans, in favor. (Though a slightly greater percentage of Southern Republicans opposed the bill, and a slightly smaller percentage of Northern Republicans supported it, than geographically comparable Democrats.)

I invite you to check your facts before you accuse someone of "Fail!" Because now you look like a total ass.

If you mean "progressive" (small "p") as in describing an individuals' attitude or outlook, then yes. If you mean Progressives, as in the movement that's been around since the '20s and counts Socialists and Communists as ideological brothers then you, sir, are incorrect.

You need to stop getting your history from Glen Beck, friend. The Progressive Era -- big P -- was from the 1890s to the 1920s, it didn't come into being in the '20s. And if you want to label Theodore Roosevelt a commie, well, good luck with that.

The rest of your post is a class-warfare mini-rant along with the "social justice" and "economic justice" buzzwords that Progressives use as cover for the fact that what they propose is socialist/communist/fascist-style redistribution of wealth by a powerful central government.

I just love the way that right-wing loons have started lumping communists and fascists together, despite the fact that one of the primary attributes of fascism was anti-communism -- fascism was the right's counter-move to the Russian Revolution. It's almost as much fun as the way they complain about people talking about class warfare, while promoting the actual practice of that warfare.

And if you think socialism necessarily implies a powerful central government, you need to read this. (And also have a look at this.) State socialism is not the only form of socialism.

It's capitalism that requires a strong government, to create and defend artificial property rights. Many socialists believe in a small government -- Marx himself, wrong as he was about so much, believed that under his philosophy the state would eventually wither away, unneeded.