Will Fifth Amendment Work with US Census 2010 Privacy Questions? Probably Not… Census Getting “Too Close & Personal” (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on March 11, 2010
Excellent video on the growing invasive nature of the US Census… I’m confident Rep. Michele Bachmann, who has expressed for months her alarm and concerns about the questions on the form, would approve of this video’s message (interviews with Bachmann are below).
The horrific waste of millions of dollars already accrued by Census 2010 is another story altogether.
And let’s not forget that newly elected Pres. Obama pushed last year to have the White House be in charge of the census — the Republicans expressed alarm over such a dangerous, partisan action, and the matter quietly dropped.
And of course, there’s the wacky census fortune cookies… Fortune Cookies Are Latest Tools in Team Obama’s Arsenal for Census 2010.
H/t to The Anchoress.
Jerry Day’s Matrix News: The Census Is Getting Personal
Breakdown provided by YouTube user minivanjack:
QUESTIONS THAT CENSUS BUREAU REFUSED OR FAILED TO ANSWER (from Jerry Day’s Matrix News Network segment: “The Census Is Getting Personal”):
1. The Constitution authorizes government to count people but it does not authorize the taking of private information or even the names of individuals. From where does the Census Bureau derive authority to demand our private information?
2. Is there any limit to the amount and type of private information that the Census bureau may demand and collect?
3. Under what Constitutional authority does the Census Bureau collect information now from 250,000 people per month of every year?
4. The 4th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits government search and seizure of private information without a court warrant based on probable cause, Current Census policies violate that Amendment do they not?
5. By what Constitutional authority does the Census Bureau threaten penalties for failure to provide personal information?
6. The Census Bureau claims it maintains privacy of personal information, Are there any circumstances under which law enforcement or spy agencies can access Census information?
7. Since presumably Census data may be subpoenaed by law enforcement, may individuals refuse to answer questions according to the fifth Amendment?
8. Why has the Census Bureau decided to collect GPS coordinates for every home?
9. Virtually every government database has been either lost, hacked or compromised, would the Census Bureau’s claim of data security not be an outright lie or at best highly improbable?
10. How would the Census Bureau locate, protect and compensate those individuals whose data becomes compromised?
There is a great deal of confusion about the Census “short form” and “Long Form” because the Census Bureau has failed to equally publicize the two current approaches. Part of the video refers to the long form called the “American Community Survey” which has 12 pages of questions, many of which are much more probing than the short form. A PDF file of the the long form can be viewed at this link: http://www.jerryday.com/images/ACS-1-…
A Year Ago: Obama’s Plan to Move the Supervision of the Census to the White House to Politicize the Census | Broadcast February 2009
These two June 2009 interviews were conducted when ACORN was still slotted to have a major role in census-taking. Since the service organization has had a growing number of corruption and fraud scandals and convictions — many of which were exposed by conservative, independent filmmaker James O’Keefe — Congress gave ACORN the boot from the census ranks in September 2009.
FOX News: Concerns with ACORN’s Involvement in 2010 Census, Bachmann Warns Of Link Between Census, Japanese Internment | Broadcast June 2009
FOX: Glenn Beck Interviews Michele Bachmann on the 2010 Census | Broadcast June 2009
About the author
This is an obvious violation of privacy.
There is a server farm being constructed in Virginia, for either the health care debacle, or the census information, or both.
As far as we are concerned, two people live here. period.
Anything else is none of their damn business.
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This presenter has raised some very interesting questions which need to be explored further. It seems that the government’s position to get around individuals’ privacy concerns is a section of the US Code which pretty much spells out that the information collected is private, and only aggregate data is published in the Census reports. But to just wave a copy of the U.S. Constitution at a Census taker and refuse to answer certain questions may very well get you in trouble. There’s another section of the US Code which states that it is a violation to not answer questions, in fact it appears that you can be fined $100 for each question you refuse to answer. If you knowingly give a false answer to a question, that’s a $500.00 fine, and doing either one of these could have you ending up in court. But keep in mind that the US Code is a compilation of the laws passed by our US Congress, all of which are supposed to be subservient to the US Constitution. So, even without going into whether the Census is authorized to ask detailed and personal questions, I would highly recommend you consult a lawyer before you risk doing something that will get you fined. Is there any information as to whether any group is bringing legal action against the Census vis-a-vis the questions they’ll be asking? Is any group lobbying their senators or representatives about investigating the issues here? That would be the better way to go rather than just refusing to answer. Since they have the authority, via the US Code, to fine people for not answering, do you want to go to the expense of hiring a lawyer to defend you in court against a fine that you will probably have to pay anyway? Ergo, do you really want to give the feds more $? Just some things to consider…
I’m undecided about how I’m going to fill out the census form, but this gave me a lot to consider. Thanks.
Great info – thx for the post.