Let us remember that the last time the privacy of census records were violated on this scale, they were used to imprison tens of thousands of law abiding American citizens, whose only crime was to have Japanese ancestry. Peter Trei ------------- http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/23/opinion/23MONK.html (free registration required) New York Times, 23 October, 2000 My Data, Mine to Keep Private By LINDA R. MONK WASHINGTON -- I was one of those paranoid Americans who chose not to answer all questions on the long form of the 2000 census. My husband and I decided that the government did not need to know, or had other ways of finding out, what time we left for work, how much our mortgage payment was or the amount of our income that came from wages. We were willing to risk the $100 fine to take a stand for individual privacy in an increasingly nosy and automated age. Editorial writers across the nation chided people like us for being so silly, insisting that only right-wing nuts with delusions of jackbooted federal invaders could possibly object to the census. Think of all the poor women who need day care and disabled people who depend on public transportation, we were told. And don't listen to the warnings of Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader - they're just another Republican ploy to get a low count on the census. Now, however, my concerns don't appear quite so ridiculous. The Congressional Budget Office, with the surprising help of some Congressional Republicans, is angling to get its hands on Census Bureau files. The budget office wants to create a "linked data set" on individuals - using information from the Internal Revenue Service, Social Security Administration and Census Bureau surveys - to help it evaluate proposed reforms in Medicare and Social Security. Under current law, census data on individuals can be used only to benefit the Census Bureau, which has balked at turning over files to the budget office without greater assurances of individual privacy. However, the Congressional number crunchers are not taking no for an answer. Republicans may tack an amendment allowing Congress access to census data onto an appropriations bill before Congress adjourns for the elections. The records the budget office wants are not themselves from the 2000 Census; they are voluntary responses to monthly surveys, with confidentiality promised. Forcing the bureau to give them up would set a disturbing precedent. Commerce Secretary Norman Mineta, who supervises the Census Bureau, warned Congress this month that amending the census law would "seriously compromise" the department's ability to safeguard taxpayers' privacy and "to assure continued high response rates of the American public to census surveys." Chip Walker, a spokesman for Representative Dan Miller, a Florida Republican who chairs the House subcommittee on the census, sees no problem with congressional access to census data. "The Census Bureau is the government, and Congress is the government," he said. Well, that's exactly what I'm afraid of. It's not surprising that a federal agency that stockpiles information would be raided by other federal agencies. If Congress changes the census law, the government will be well on its way to becoming another Amazon.com, which abruptly and retroactively weakened its privacy policy this year. I expected as much, because I don't believe either the government or businesses when they promise me privacy. That's why I routinely lie about personal information when applying for shoppers' discount cards and the like. And it's why I don't answer invasive questions on census forms. Keep your hands off my data set.