One major problem with collecting all the detail they ask for is that
it makes it much easier to identify you as an individual,
without them giving out the record with your name on it,
by using the very detailed summaries that *are* available.
Census tracts aren't very big, at least in urban areas, often a few blocks.
How many 3BR 2BA houses on your block have a Celtic-American male engineer,
a Japanese-Hawaiian female medical professional, 2 kids aged 3 and 11,
household income of $100-$200K, 2 cars older than 10 years?
Probably just you, and half of these details can be correlated from
other sources, like school enrollment, real estate taxes, car registration,
and that tells them that every other field on the record is about you,
even though they won't divulge the record saying 1234 Main St. has
0 televisions, >4 computers, 1 ferret, or that the medical professional
works at home?
>> It costs only $100 to opt-out. This is an opportunity for many to
>> find out just how how much they value their privacy. If it is below
>> $100, then all this whining about it is just a sign of boredom.
At 09:37 AM 03/14/2000 -0500, Peter Capelli wrote:
> I had the same thought. Until I figured that if they ever did
>initiate a court proceeding (which I doubt), then they could subpoena
>me for the information anyway, nullifying all the gain.
It'll cost them lots more than $100 to do a court proceeding,
so it's not worth their time except for making examples of a few people.
It's not clear that they could subpoena you for the information,
except maybe your name and address, because it's not relevant to the case
of whether you filled out the form or not. (If you lie on the form,
that's a different issue - then it's relevant.)
The judge could probably order you to fill out the form.
> On a side note, if the census dept. feels that my information is
> worth $100 to them, why don't they pay me $100 for it? I thought if
> the feds took 'property' (e.g. information) from me they had to
> compensate me for that. Since they've set the price at $100, it only
> seems fair to use that number ...
The $100 isn't the fair market value of the information,
it's the penalty for not obeying. If you wanted to have fun with a court
case,
you could contend that the number of people in the house is Constitutionally
legitimate request, but the rest of it isn't, and try to get the
court to establish a fair market value, by trying to subpoena any
of the government users of the census information, find out how much
the government gets by selling data, try to get an estimate of
how much free access to the information the Feds give away, etc.
As with all such court cases, don't think of trying it unless
you've got the legal resources to win (since setting bad precedents
is a bad idea), and unless it's your idea of fun (for some people, it is.)
Courts generally only allow use of the 5th Amendment when
something might incriminate you. Census data was used to arrest
Japanese-Americans during WW2, even though being Japanese was
not a crime at the time the census was taken; who knows what
may become illegal in the future? What may become sufficiently
illegal that the government will either change the published rules
for census data detail access, or provide "law enforcement" backdoor access?
The 99-year privacy bit is their current promise, but that's just a law;
nothing says they can't change it any time they feel like,
or change the number of people and detail level in the summaries.
They probably wouldn't have the political support just for dog licenses,
or for communities with cohabitation laws against various combinations
of people (some for morality-enforcement; others for summer-tenant-control.)
But there's always the drug war, or undocumented immigrants,
or welfare queens, or (to pick on the liberals for a change) slumlords -
too many tenants for the number of bathrooms in the house,
or housing discrimination (blocks of apartments with no kids,
or with not enough minorities, or lots of Hispanics but no Undocumenteds,
etc.)
What if the census shows more school-age kids than the school records show?
Are there people (gasp) home-schooling their kids without teacher
certification
or safety regulations. Several Presidents in a row have promised to be
The Education President - maybe the next one will do something about it...
(And, if I get the version of the form that wants to know
how many toilets are in the house, does that count the
litter-boxes used by the three Undocumented Feline-Americans that live there?
How many telephones do I have, anyway? I've lost track,
and do you count the old semi-working ones in the electric-junk box?)
Tim ranted about racial/ethnic classifications.
A former boss of mine had a coworker named "Mueller" who lost one
job opportunity to a reasonably-well-qualified minority during
some of the early affirmative action stuff. Mueller _was_
a Puerto Rican, but the bureaucratic definition of the time was
"Spanish-Surnamed", so he didn't fill their quota.
Do Americans from North African Arab backgrounds get to be
"African-American", or do they just have to check "Semite"?
Thanks!
Bill
Bill Stewart, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
