CDR: Congress proposes raiding census records.

[Trei, Peter]

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

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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.