The Census Is Getting Personal
5:19 February 11, 2010
News & Politics
minivanjack
Many people have requested the list below:
QUESTIONS THAT THE CENSUS BUREAU REFUSED OR FAILED TO ANSWER (from Jerry Day's Matrix News Network segment: "The Census Is Getting Personal"):
1) The Constitution authorizes government to count people but it does not authorize the taking of private information or even the names of individuals. From where does the Census Bureau derive authority to demand our private information?
2) Is there any limit to the amount and type of private information that the Census bureau may demand and collect?
3) Under what Constitutional authority does the Census Bureau collect information now from 250,000 people per month of every year?
4) The 4th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits government search and seizure of private information without a court warrant based on probable cause, Current Census policies violate that Amendment do they not?
5) By what Constitutional authority does the Census Bureau threaten penalties for failure to provide personal information?
6) The Census Bureau claims it maintains privacy of personal information, Are there any circumstances under which law enforcement or spy agencies can access Census information?
7) Since presumably Census data may be subpoenaed by law enforcement, may individuals refuse to answer questions according to the fifth Amendment?
8) Why has the Census Bureau decided to collect GPS coordinates for every home?
9) Virtually every government database has been either lost, hacked or compromised, would the Census Bureau's claim of data security not be an outright lie or at best highly improbable?
10) How would the Census Bureau locate, protect and compensate those individuals whose data becomes compromised?
There is a great deal of confusion about the Census "short form" and "Long Form" because the Census Bureau has failed to equally publicize the two current approaches. Part of the video refers to the long form called the "American Community Survey" which has 12 pages of questions, many of which are much more probing than the short form. A PDF file of the the long form can be viewed at this link: http://www.jerryday.com/images/ACS-1-Stateside-English_web.pdf
Did Census Workers respect your wishes and requests for privacy or not? Post your review in the comments here. Let us know the city or region of the census activity you saw. This page has no affiliation with the Census Bureau or any government agency. We would like to host honest and fair monitoring of Census collection activity on this web page.
Please have regard for the safety of Census Workers.
