11 ms·

What happens if I don't fill out my census form? (2019)

35 points by cVwEq 7y ago

downerending 7y ago
tldr: nothing (Can confirm, was Census enumerator. You probably will get an in-person attempt from a very-low-paid enumerator, though.)
- crooked-v 7y ago
  The pay is actually pretty decent, and is cost-of-living adjusted. In Portland where I live, for example, it's $18/hour, which is way better than some temp jobs I've had.
  - downerending 7y ago
    Interesting. Back when I did it, it was piecework. Maybe one to three dollars per household, depending on whether it was a short or long form, and whether you managed to get someone to fill it out. That was around minimum wage, though if you hustled (or pencil-whipped things), you could probably make more. Also, I think I heard that these days you have to produce your draft registration number in order to apply, which sucks.
    - crooked-v 7y ago
      > you have to produce your draft registration number in order to apply Not true. What you actually have to do is sign a form declaring that you are or aren't registered with Selective Service, and if not a brief reason why, which is the same information-gathering requirement for most or all federal jobs. You can actually see the full set of paperwork with PDF forms here: https://www.census.gov/about/census-careers/new_emp.html https://www.census.gov/about/census-careers/new_emp.html The main one is the Declaration for Federal Employment, which is the generic form that everybody who ever wants to work for the government in any capacity has to fill out.
      - downerending 7y ago
        Glad to hear it.
  - dawnerd 7y ago
    So in theory, I should hold off on answering so someone gets paid to come to my house? Do they have a quota to hit, like if I take my time with them do they get punished?
    - sokoloff 7y ago
      If you believe in the broken window fallacy and have time to kill, yes.
    - jeffdavis 7y ago
      Or maybe they would prefer to spend their time finding people who are actually hard to enunerate, rather than wasting on someone who is just looking to consume their time.
      - dawnerd 7y ago
        I was putting a hypothetical on helping them make more money, you shouldn't take it seriously.
      - imtringued 7y ago
        The idea is to get "contacts" and tell them to be "hard to enumerate" and then collect a paycheck.
    - crooked-v 7y ago
      There's no quota, but enumerator hours-per-week are based on estimates of work and there's no particular effort to claw back unused time if the actual work is done early, so intentional foot-dragging just takes up de facto paid time the enumerator could spend on other things like school or job-hunting.
    - downerending 7y ago
      Just don't set your dog or the cops on them, and they'll be happy enough.
rspoerri 7y ago
watch "The Census: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" on this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aheRpmurAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aheRpmurAo
- ars 7y ago
  Deleted: Made a mistake.
  - dhosek 7y ago
    That's information which is 20 years out of date. Oliver is right, Trump is wrong.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Your link does not support your claim, and this link gives more detail not supporting your claim. https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-question/plumbing/ https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-questio...
droithomme 7y ago
I got randomly selected for the long one in 2010. There were several questions I was not able to answer but providing incorrect information is a crime and not answering is a crime. So I did nothing. They sent one or two threatening follow ups. Then an in-person enumerator showed up and ran me through the short-form questions only, which was fine.
- crooked-v 7y ago
  > providing incorrect information is a crime and not answering is a crime. So I did nothing. The correct answer in this case is to say "I don't know". You can write in stuff on census forms and it's up to the local office to process those as special cases.
  - droithomme 7y ago
    That's not something they say you can do. In my case the correct answer was to do nothing, then cooperate with the enumerator on the short form questions, which as I said was fine.
- burkaman 7y ago
  You might be thinking of 2000, there was no long form in 2010. Could you not answer because you didn't know, or you didn't want to answer those questions?
  - droithomme 7y ago
    OK, thanks, I managed to find the form they sent me. It was the Census' American Community Survey, which claims "Your Response is Required by Law". I agree that cooperation with the decennial census is required by law to the extent it collects ages and citizenship status of household individuals, but I do not agree that the Census clause of the Constitution authorizes the collection of the American Community Survey information, which is vastly beyond the scope of Congressional districting needs. The claim that my response is required by law is fallacious and is worthy of being challenged in court. > Could you not answer because you didn't know, or you didn't want to answer those questions? Didn't know many. Didn't see how the Census clause authorized the collection of personal and private information they were demanding I turn over accurately under criminal penalty otherwise. Not knowing was sufficient to not be able to respond.
vearwhershuh 7y ago
Nothing. Nothing happens. You may get an in-person visit, and if you blow them off, nothing also happens. As with voting, it only encourages them. They are passionate about getting you to participate because they want the appearance of legitimacy, so you get obvious fear-and-guilt-prop like this.
- crooked-v 7y ago
  > Nothing. Nothing happens. Except for your area getting federally undercounted, which loses representation and tax dollars for you and all your neighbors.
  - c22 7y ago
    Is there any reason to believe that more people are failing to fill out the census in my area than in other areas? Because if the failure rate is about the same everywhere it probably does make little difference.
    - imtringued 7y ago
      How do you know the failure rate is the same everywhere? It is very possible that the failure rate correlates with the region because it is not a purely stochastic process. Some users here think the government has no business in demanding census information and simply ignore it.
      - c22 7y ago
        I don't have any data either way, do you? HN users don't represent a geographical region, per se, but I suppose you could argue that they're mostly in SF? Regardless, I imagine there are other communities that might also have a higher-than-baseline failure rate, but absent any evidence I have no reason to assume they're not fairly randomly distributed geographically. Especially at the granularity of US states.
MaysonL 7y ago
They missed me in 1990 and 2000, when I was unconventionally housed (living in the office).
- thedirt0115 7y ago
  Hopefully you are in a better situation now. For anyone who is currently homeless, but wants to be counted, the census bureau has the following plans: March 30, 2020: Counting people who are in shelters. March 31, 2020: Counting people at soup kitchens and mobile food vans. April 1, 2020: Counting people in non-sheltered, outdoor locations, such as tent encampments and on the streets. See this for more information: https://2020census.gov/en/what-is-2020-census/focus/people-experiencing-homelessness.html https://2020census.gov/en/what-is-2020-census/focus/people-e...
dhosek 7y ago
If you live in a Republican district/state you should definitely refuse to fill out the census.
- gruez 7y ago
  Why?
  - TAForObvReasons 7y ago
    Census count influences the number of districts and representatives. The larger manifestation of disproportionate representation is the Senate, but that’s not influenced by census counts
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  Remember everybody, accounts of democrat voter fraud are fake news.
lsiebert 7y ago
This is worth quoting here IMHO: "However, even if you don't get fined for not filling out the census form, there are some good reasons you should do it anyway. Seats in the House of Representatives seats are apportioned by population, with the most populous states receiving the most seats. Federal and state governments rely on census data to budget for social welfare programs that assist the poor, elderly, disabled and veterans. Cities and private industry use demographic figures to plan new hospitals and housing developments, and to assess the need for new schools or new strip malls. So, not filling out the census form may cost you something in the long run."
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >Seats in the House of Representatives seats are apportioned by population, with the most populous states receiving the most seats. People in the minority party in solidly red/blue states would want their state to lose votes in order to increase the representation of their party.
  - onionisafruit 7y ago
    Not everything is about national politics. I live in a Republican controlled state, and even though I’m not a Republican, I want us to be represented and properly funded. So I will fill out my census form. Just because I don’t have the same political views as my neighbors doesn’t mean I want to disenfranchise them (and myself while I’m at it).
- coryrc 7y ago
  Some of us live where we oppose all of the current elected officials. In that case, it sounds like opting out is the only effective "vote" we can make in a FPTP system
  - jonny_eh 7y ago
    That's like cutting of the nose to spite the face.
  - simonh 7y ago
sneak 7y ago
The US federal government has an exact, real-time count and location of every single person with a phone in the country due to universal bulk surveillance. Cross-referenced with the subscriber records from wireless, cable, and utility companies, databases from data brokers that are fed by loyalty programs and supermarkets, and every bank or credit card swipe in real-time, they already have 100% of this data in far higher resolution than will ever be collected by the census. They know about your address updates even before you tell the DMV. I will be ignoring the effort.
- jasongill 7y ago
  Citation needed
  - sneak 7y ago
    https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20965354/nsa-intelligence-no-warrant-phone-location-data-collection https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20965354/nsa-intelligenc... https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/nsa-improper-phone-records-collection/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/nsa-improper-phone-records... https://www.wired.com/2010/12/realtime/ https://www.wired.com/2010/12/realtime/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/not-just-nsa-data-brokers-amass-detailed-profiles-everyone-online https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/not-just-nsa-dat...
    - gruez 7y ago
      >https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20965354/nsa-intelligenc.. https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20965354/nsa-intelligenc.... >The NSA has stopped collecting location data from US cellphones without a warrant uh, isn't that a counter-proof? edit: >https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/nsa-improper-phone-records.. https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/nsa-improper-phone-records.... >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A not exactly location data >https://www.wired.com/2010/12/realtime/ https://www.wired.com/2010/12/realtime/ sounds like a great way to under-count people with poor credit or access to banking >https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/not-just-nsa-dat.. https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/not-just-nsa-dat.... Sure, it'd probably be cheaper to buy the data off some data broker rather than doing a census yourself, but how clean is their data? Are they also going to disclose their methodologies? Is giving a few private companies the power to control government funding allocation and distribution of congressional power really a good idea?
rolleiflex 7y ago
One thing I’m curious about is, why does a country need to do this in the first place? From the example I’m familiar with: the last ever census in Turkey was held in 2007. There on, there is now a live, real-time count of everyone in the country. Why doesn’t that work in the US? Surely US is capable of it, but I wonder if the blockage is inertial, political or just not enough of a priority.
- kadoban 7y ago
  In short? Because the Constitution specifies how it must be done, any ambiguity is enshrined in tradition, and neither is realistically changeable.
- stonogo 7y ago
  "Counting everyone in the country" is one aspect of the census effort. Looking at where they live, what they do for a living, and if they live alone or with others are other aspects. In the US, when someone moves from one state to another, they're not required to notify the US government in any way. Most states have rules about getting your vehicles licensed within a certain time frame after settling in a state, or rules about when you must acquire a driver license and/or state ID. The rules are wildly different across all fifty states, and it's not feasible to "just track" everyone since the national government has no explicit authority to. The census, however, is explicitly assigned to the federal government in the constitution.
  - hurricanetc 7y ago
    The idea that the US federal government doesn’t know where people are and who they are talking to is hilarious. We have the biggest spying apparatus in human history. This is 100% political.
    - mr_toad 7y ago
      The census predates mass surveillance. The bureaucracy changes slowly. I doubt the agencies with the surveillance data want to share it. The data isn’t a count of people. It’s one record per conversation, or whatever. It’s probably riddled with errors and duplicates, incorrect names, dates of birth etc. It probably misses a lot of people (like children). Getting a unique count of individuals, with accurate addresses and demographic information would be a Sisyphean task.
grawprog 7y ago
I didn't fill out the last census forms in protest of the longform census that year(in Canada) that asked for what I considered to be unnecessary information I didn't wish to divulge. Nobody that lived in the house filled one out. Nothing came of it. Census people showed up at the door every day for a while, but would leave after a bunch of knocking with no answer. I do normally fill them out though. For reference Canada has similar census laws to America.
chadthenderson 7y ago
In 2010 I just kept forgetting to fill out the census. My census guy left notes on my apartment door begging me to call him. Finally, one day, he literally popped out of the fucking bushes with the census form.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  I kept getting some mid-census domestic abuse questionnaire a couple years ago. I had zero interest in filling it out but they were persistent about that too.
ken 7y ago
The US census was infamously used to assist in rounding up Americans of specific ethnic backgrounds for concentration camps. It would go a long way to easing people’s minds if they had some way to guarantee that this could not happen again. I realize there is value in gathering attributes beyond just “one person”, but storing these attributes in a way that can be connected to addresses seems seriously problematic.
- Wohlf 7y ago
  France had the same issue with Jews being rounded up during Nazi occupation with help from government data, their answer was to no longer collect data on ethnicity.
- yardstick 7y ago
  I agree that the data should be treated anonymously and confidentially, with severe punishment to abuses. Would the lack of census data prevented the concentration camps from operating? It may have instead taken longer and required more people, but I would expect that at the time anyone with a Japanese/Chinese look or name to have been detained anyway. Side note: It seems even the 2nd amendment didn’t help citizens resist agains oppression. I suspect these days the government has enough information already on its citizens through other means (intelligence agencies etc) than the census, to still target based on race if they wanted to. Immediately after 9-11 the discrimination against Muslim, Arabic and other minorities was rather pronounced. No census data needed to that either. People just judged by visual appearance or name.
  - ken 7y ago
    > I agree that the data should be treated anonymously and confidentially, with severe punishment to abuses. What constitutes "abuse"? Differential privacy is hard. Once the data has been collected, simply not being an expert in statistics can be enough to accidentally leak sensitive data. The government is simultaneously the data collector, data user, and prosecutor of abuses, so I'm skeptical that much will come of any such promise. Maybe a letter of apology in 50 years. > I suspect these days the government has enough information already on its citizens through other means (intelligence agencies etc) than the census, to still target based on race if they wanted to. Pointing out that ethnic minorities are likely to be screwed anyway in such a situation, even without census data, is not going to ease anyone’s mind.
pndy 7y ago
Next national census in Poland happens in 2021 and also here, you can be fined or sent to prison, get non-custodial sentence by not participating or providing false answers; persons covered by census are obliged to participate. Those who by gathering answers for census surveys and processing data will gain any profits can be imprisoned for up to 5 years. So far no one from my family was chosen; since fall of the Eastern bloc there were 2 censuses, in 2002 and 2011
teilo 7y ago
>Note that the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 has increased the fine for any criminal misdemeanor to as much as $5,000. In practice, though, no one has been prosecuted for not filling out the census since 1970, according to a 2014 Politifact article. That article is wrong, and the fine is absolutely not $5,000. If that article were correct, then there would be no federal fines under $5,000 anywhere. This is misinformation that the census bureau likes to spread around to scare people. In face, the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 applies only to criminal cases. This means that the fine is actually $100. I went through this rigmarole when I got one of those off-year census forms during the Obama administration, asking about what my family eats, how many toilets we have, etc. I refused to fill it out. A guy showed up at my door. He showed me the brochure that said it was mandatory, and what the potential fine was. The same $5,000 number was quoted. I told him I would not be participating in this program, and that his brochure was lying because this was not a criminal offense. He agreed it was not a criminal matter. And that was that.

35 points by cVwEq 7y ago

tldr: nothing (Can confirm, was Census enumerator. You probably will get an in-person attempt from a very-low-paid enumerator, though.)

crooked-v 7y ago
The pay is actually pretty decent, and is cost-of-living adjusted. In Portland where I live, for example, it's $18/hour, which is way better than some temp jobs I've had.
- downerending 7y ago
  Interesting. Back when I did it, it was piecework. Maybe one to three dollars per household, depending on whether it was a short or long form, and whether you managed to get someone to fill it out. That was around minimum wage, though if you hustled (or pencil-whipped things), you could probably make more. Also, I think I heard that these days you have to produce your draft registration number in order to apply, which sucks.
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    > you have to produce your draft registration number in order to apply Not true. What you actually have to do is sign a form declaring that you are or aren't registered with Selective Service, and if not a brief reason why, which is the same information-gathering requirement for most or all federal jobs. You can actually see the full set of paperwork with PDF forms here: https://www.census.gov/about/census-careers/new_emp.html https://www.census.gov/about/census-careers/new_emp.html The main one is the Declaration for Federal Employment, which is the generic form that everybody who ever wants to work for the government in any capacity has to fill out.
    - downerending 7y ago
      Glad to hear it.
- dawnerd 7y ago
  So in theory, I should hold off on answering so someone gets paid to come to my house? Do they have a quota to hit, like if I take my time with them do they get punished?
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    If you believe in the broken window fallacy and have time to kill, yes.
  - jeffdavis 7y ago
    Or maybe they would prefer to spend their time finding people who are actually hard to enunerate, rather than wasting on someone who is just looking to consume their time.
    - dawnerd 7y ago
      I was putting a hypothetical on helping them make more money, you shouldn't take it seriously.
    - imtringued 7y ago
      The idea is to get "contacts" and tell them to be "hard to enumerate" and then collect a paycheck.
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    There's no quota, but enumerator hours-per-week are based on estimates of work and there's no particular effort to claw back unused time if the actual work is done early, so intentional foot-dragging just takes up de facto paid time the enumerator could spend on other things like school or job-hunting.
  - downerending 7y ago
    Just don't set your dog or the cops on them, and they'll be happy enough.

rspoerri 7y ago

watch "The Census: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" on this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aheRpmurAo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aheRpmurAo

ars 7y ago
Deleted: Made a mistake.
- dhosek 7y ago
  That's information which is 20 years out of date. Oliver is right, Trump is wrong.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Your link does not support your claim, and this link gives more detail not supporting your claim. https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-question/plumbing/ https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-questio...

droithomme 7y ago

I got randomly selected for the long one in 2010. There were several questions I was not able to answer but providing incorrect information is a crime and not answering is a crime. So I did nothing. They sent one or two threatening follow ups. Then an in-person enumerator showed up and ran me through the short-form questions only, which was fine.

crooked-v 7y ago
> providing incorrect information is a crime and not answering is a crime. So I did nothing. The correct answer in this case is to say "I don't know". You can write in stuff on census forms and it's up to the local office to process those as special cases.
- droithomme 7y ago
  That's not something they say you can do. In my case the correct answer was to do nothing, then cooperate with the enumerator on the short form questions, which as I said was fine.
burkaman 7y ago
You might be thinking of 2000, there was no long form in 2010. Could you not answer because you didn't know, or you didn't want to answer those questions?
- droithomme 7y ago
  OK, thanks, I managed to find the form they sent me. It was the Census' American Community Survey, which claims "Your Response is Required by Law". I agree that cooperation with the decennial census is required by law to the extent it collects ages and citizenship status of household individuals, but I do not agree that the Census clause of the Constitution authorizes the collection of the American Community Survey information, which is vastly beyond the scope of Congressional districting needs. The claim that my response is required by law is fallacious and is worthy of being challenged in court. > Could you not answer because you didn't know, or you didn't want to answer those questions? Didn't know many. Didn't see how the Census clause authorized the collection of personal and private information they were demanding I turn over accurately under criminal penalty otherwise. Not knowing was sufficient to not be able to respond.

vearwhershuh 7y ago

Nothing. Nothing happens. You may get an in-person visit, and if you blow them off, nothing also happens. As with voting, it only encourages them. They are passionate about getting you to participate because they want the appearance of legitimacy, so you get obvious fear-and-guilt-prop like this.

crooked-v 7y ago
> Nothing. Nothing happens. Except for your area getting federally undercounted, which loses representation and tax dollars for you and all your neighbors.
- c22 7y ago
  Is there any reason to believe that more people are failing to fill out the census in my area than in other areas? Because if the failure rate is about the same everywhere it probably does make little difference.
  - imtringued 7y ago
    How do you know the failure rate is the same everywhere? It is very possible that the failure rate correlates with the region because it is not a purely stochastic process. Some users here think the government has no business in demanding census information and simply ignore it.
    - c22 7y ago
      I don't have any data either way, do you? HN users don't represent a geographical region, per se, but I suppose you could argue that they're mostly in SF? Regardless, I imagine there are other communities that might also have a higher-than-baseline failure rate, but absent any evidence I have no reason to assume they're not fairly randomly distributed geographically. Especially at the granularity of US states.

MaysonL 7y ago

They missed me in 1990 and 2000, when I was unconventionally housed (living in the office).

thedirt0115 7y ago
Hopefully you are in a better situation now. For anyone who is currently homeless, but wants to be counted, the census bureau has the following plans: March 30, 2020: Counting people who are in shelters. March 31, 2020: Counting people at soup kitchens and mobile food vans. April 1, 2020: Counting people in non-sheltered, outdoor locations, such as tent encampments and on the streets. See this for more information: https://2020census.gov/en/what-is-2020-census/focus/people-experiencing-homelessness.html https://2020census.gov/en/what-is-2020-census/focus/people-e...

dhosek 7y ago

If you live in a Republican district/state you should definitely refuse to fill out the census.

gruez 7y ago
Why?
- TAForObvReasons 7y ago
  Census count influences the number of districts and representatives. The larger manifestation of disproportionate representation is the Senate, but that’s not influenced by census counts
AmericanChopper 7y ago
Remember everybody, accounts of democrat voter fraud are fake news.

lsiebert 7y ago

This is worth quoting here IMHO: "However, even if you don't get fined for not filling out the census form, there are some good reasons you should do it anyway. Seats in the House of Representatives seats are apportioned by population, with the most populous states receiving the most seats. Federal and state governments rely on census data to budget for social welfare programs that assist the poor, elderly, disabled and veterans. Cities and private industry use demographic figures to plan new hospitals and housing developments, and to assess the need for new schools or new strip malls. So, not filling out the census form may cost you something in the long run."

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>Seats in the House of Representatives seats are apportioned by population, with the most populous states receiving the most seats. People in the minority party in solidly red/blue states would want their state to lose votes in order to increase the representation of their party.
- onionisafruit 7y ago
  Not everything is about national politics. I live in a Republican controlled state, and even though I’m not a Republican, I want us to be represented and properly funded. So I will fill out my census form. Just because I don’t have the same political views as my neighbors doesn’t mean I want to disenfranchise them (and myself while I’m at it).
coryrc 7y ago
Some of us live where we oppose all of the current elected officials. In that case, it sounds like opting out is the only effective "vote" we can make in a FPTP system
- jonny_eh 7y ago
  That's like cutting of the nose to spite the face.
- simonh 7y ago

sneak 7y ago

The US federal government has an exact, real-time count and location of every single person with a phone in the country due to universal bulk surveillance. Cross-referenced with the subscriber records from wireless, cable, and utility companies, databases from data brokers that are fed by loyalty programs and supermarkets, and every bank or credit card swipe in real-time, they already have 100% of this data in far higher resolution than will ever be collected by the census. They know about your address updates even before you tell the DMV. I will be ignoring the effort.

jasongill 7y ago
Citation needed
- sneak 7y ago
  https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20965354/nsa-intelligence-no-warrant-phone-location-data-collection https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20965354/nsa-intelligenc... https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/nsa-improper-phone-records-collection/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/nsa-improper-phone-records... https://www.wired.com/2010/12/realtime/ https://www.wired.com/2010/12/realtime/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/not-just-nsa-data-brokers-amass-detailed-profiles-everyone-online https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/not-just-nsa-dat...
  - gruez 7y ago
    >https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20965354/nsa-intelligenc.. https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20965354/nsa-intelligenc.... >The NSA has stopped collecting location data from US cellphones without a warrant uh, isn't that a counter-proof? edit: >https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/nsa-improper-phone-records.. https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/26/nsa-improper-phone-records.... >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A not exactly location data >https://www.wired.com/2010/12/realtime/ https://www.wired.com/2010/12/realtime/ sounds like a great way to under-count people with poor credit or access to banking >https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/not-just-nsa-dat.. https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/not-just-nsa-dat.... Sure, it'd probably be cheaper to buy the data off some data broker rather than doing a census yourself, but how clean is their data? Are they also going to disclose their methodologies? Is giving a few private companies the power to control government funding allocation and distribution of congressional power really a good idea?

rolleiflex 7y ago

One thing I’m curious about is, why does a country need to do this in the first place? From the example I’m familiar with: the last ever census in Turkey was held in 2007. There on, there is now a live, real-time count of everyone in the country. Why doesn’t that work in the US? Surely US is capable of it, but I wonder if the blockage is inertial, political or just not enough of a priority.

kadoban 7y ago
In short? Because the Constitution specifies how it must be done, any ambiguity is enshrined in tradition, and neither is realistically changeable.
stonogo 7y ago
"Counting everyone in the country" is one aspect of the census effort. Looking at where they live, what they do for a living, and if they live alone or with others are other aspects. In the US, when someone moves from one state to another, they're not required to notify the US government in any way. Most states have rules about getting your vehicles licensed within a certain time frame after settling in a state, or rules about when you must acquire a driver license and/or state ID. The rules are wildly different across all fifty states, and it's not feasible to "just track" everyone since the national government has no explicit authority to. The census, however, is explicitly assigned to the federal government in the constitution.
- hurricanetc 7y ago
  The idea that the US federal government doesn’t know where people are and who they are talking to is hilarious. We have the biggest spying apparatus in human history. This is 100% political.
  - mr_toad 7y ago
    The census predates mass surveillance. The bureaucracy changes slowly. I doubt the agencies with the surveillance data want to share it. The data isn’t a count of people. It’s one record per conversation, or whatever. It’s probably riddled with errors and duplicates, incorrect names, dates of birth etc. It probably misses a lot of people (like children). Getting a unique count of individuals, with accurate addresses and demographic information would be a Sisyphean task.

grawprog 7y ago

I didn't fill out the last census forms in protest of the longform census that year(in Canada) that asked for what I considered to be unnecessary information I didn't wish to divulge. Nobody that lived in the house filled one out. Nothing came of it. Census people showed up at the door every day for a while, but would leave after a bunch of knocking with no answer. I do normally fill them out though. For reference Canada has similar census laws to America.

chadthenderson 7y ago

In 2010 I just kept forgetting to fill out the census. My census guy left notes on my apartment door begging me to call him. Finally, one day, he literally popped out of the fucking bushes with the census form.

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
I kept getting some mid-census domestic abuse questionnaire a couple years ago. I had zero interest in filling it out but they were persistent about that too.

ken 7y ago

The US census was infamously used to assist in rounding up Americans of specific ethnic backgrounds for concentration camps. It would go a long way to easing people’s minds if they had some way to guarantee that this could not happen again. I realize there is value in gathering attributes beyond just “one person”, but storing these attributes in a way that can be connected to addresses seems seriously problematic.

Wohlf 7y ago
France had the same issue with Jews being rounded up during Nazi occupation with help from government data, their answer was to no longer collect data on ethnicity.
yardstick 7y ago
I agree that the data should be treated anonymously and confidentially, with severe punishment to abuses. Would the lack of census data prevented the concentration camps from operating? It may have instead taken longer and required more people, but I would expect that at the time anyone with a Japanese/Chinese look or name to have been detained anyway. Side note: It seems even the 2nd amendment didn’t help citizens resist agains oppression. I suspect these days the government has enough information already on its citizens through other means (intelligence agencies etc) than the census, to still target based on race if they wanted to. Immediately after 9-11 the discrimination against Muslim, Arabic and other minorities was rather pronounced. No census data needed to that either. People just judged by visual appearance or name.
- ken 7y ago
  > I agree that the data should be treated anonymously and confidentially, with severe punishment to abuses. What constitutes "abuse"? Differential privacy is hard. Once the data has been collected, simply not being an expert in statistics can be enough to accidentally leak sensitive data. The government is simultaneously the data collector, data user, and prosecutor of abuses, so I'm skeptical that much will come of any such promise. Maybe a letter of apology in 50 years. > I suspect these days the government has enough information already on its citizens through other means (intelligence agencies etc) than the census, to still target based on race if they wanted to. Pointing out that ethnic minorities are likely to be screwed anyway in such a situation, even without census data, is not going to ease anyone’s mind.

pndy 7y ago

Next national census in Poland happens in 2021 and also here, you can be fined or sent to prison, get non-custodial sentence by not participating or providing false answers; persons covered by census are obliged to participate. Those who by gathering answers for census surveys and processing data will gain any profits can be imprisoned for up to 5 years. So far no one from my family was chosen; since fall of the Eastern bloc there were 2 censuses, in 2002 and 2011

teilo 7y ago

>Note that the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 has increased the fine for any criminal misdemeanor to as much as $5,000. In practice, though, no one has been prosecuted for not filling out the census since 1970, according to a 2014 Politifact article. That article is wrong, and the fine is absolutely not $5,000. If that article were correct, then there would be no federal fines under $5,000 anywhere. This is misinformation that the census bureau likes to spread around to scare people. In face, the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 applies only to criminal cases. This means that the fine is actually $100. I went through this rigmarole when I got one of those off-year census forms during the Obama administration, asking about what my family eats, how many toilets we have, etc. I refused to fill it out. A guy showed up at my door. He showed me the brochure that said it was mandatory, and what the potential fine was. The same $5,000 number was quoted. I told him I would not be participating in this program, and that his brochure was lying because this was not a criminal offense. He agreed it was not a criminal matter. And that was that.