Mary Theroux of the Independent Institute warns here about the dangers when the Census goes beyond its Constitutional limit. I don’t know about you, but when I fill out my form I will plead Article I, Section 2 when I refuse to provide more than the names and ages of those in my household.
Data from the 1940 Census was used to intern Japanese, Italian, and
German Americans following the U.S.?s entry into the war, and to
monitor and persecute others who escaped internment. In addition to
providing geographic information to the War Department, the Census
Bureau released the name, address, age, sex, citizenship status and
occupation of Japanese Americans in the Washington, D.C., area to the
Treasury Department in response to an unspecified threat against President Franklin Roosevelt in 1943…..Meanwhile, the data is also shared a little more broadly than
advertised. Stanford University recently joined UC Berkeley, Duke, the
University of Michigan, UCLA, and others in having its very own census
data center. As the director of the new center explained, ?The Census
Bureau is very interested in making the centers more accessible to
scholars who can use the data they provide.?As Henry Brady,
dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and
principal investigator for the California Census Research Data Centers
helpfully added: ?We?re trying to make centers where lots of federal
agencies will let us use their data.?While reassurances are
repeated that the data is held under the strictest security, and will
only be used for innocuous projects like ?government programs and
solutions to our problems,? do we really want academics to social
engineer policy solutions based on sensitive personal data? After all,
they may turn out to be no more desirable than the ?solutions? provided
by government programs like internment and renditioning. Without the
protections afforded by a right to privacy, there?s little chance of
escaping a political will to enforce discriminatory policies.
