Gore's Misleading us (was: Congress proposes raiding census records.)
- Original Message - X-Loop: openpgp.net From: Sampo A Syreeni [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Multiple recipients of list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2000 10:58 AM Subject: Re: Congress proposes raiding census records. On Wed, 25 Oct 2000, jim bell wrote: Not "mexican-american." The average American's illusion is that when an illegal alien is found he's immediately kicked across the border. Well, the first time maybe, but there is now a 2-year sentence for illegal entry for repeat offenders. What's the history of this particular piece of legislation? A naive person might think there has to be something special about the crime if jurisdiction can be obtained merely via the presence of an individual. It's called illegal entry. Probably most countries have such laws, although whether they are quite so actively enforced as southwestern US is a question. Very convenient, because the majority of prison guards are probably ex-US Military-types who "need" to be kept in the Federal fold. For every couple of beaners they keep, they get to hire another guard. OK. This would be 'rent-seeking', right? ;) In the last day or two, Gore promised (in response to Bush's criticism) that he wouldn't increase the size of the Federal Government. (Don't know the exact wording, but I think it was based on the number of employees.) Sounds reassuring? No way. Over the last 10 years the US military has shrunk due to the end of the Cold War, etc. As it should, and in fact it should probably shrink a lot more. ( I wish I had the exact figures with me.) But what has happened is that many ex-military-types were simply shifted to other areas of the Federal Government. Sure, the overall size of government is smaller, but not nearly as much as it could have been if the non-military areas of government were fixed in size and did not help absorb the overflow. If anyone has the statistics, I'd like to read the details. Jim Bell
Re: Congress proposes raiding census records.
I didn't answer even that question. I did not return the form. My result was the same as yours: No visits or inquiries. That's a shame. If I get fined $100, I can write a column about my experience and sell it for much more. -Declan On Wed, Oct 25, 2000 at 04:08:42AM -0400, Lucky Green wrote: I only answered the first question in the last census: how many people live at that address (or something to that effect). The rest I crossed out with fat black permanent marker. The result: no visits from the census taker. No inquiries from the Census Office. No fine. No repercussions of any kind. I am puzzled why anybody would have bothered to answer the remaining questions. --Lucky Green [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Anytime you decrypt... its against the law". Jack Valenti, President, Motion Picture Association of America in a sworn deposition, 2000-06-06 -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Trei, Peter Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2000 14:07 To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Congress proposes raiding census records. 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.
Re: Congress proposes raiding census records.
At 09:45 AM 10/25/00 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote: I didn't answer even that question. I did not return the form. My result was the same as yours: No visits or inquiries. That's a shame. If I get fined $100, I can write a column about my experience and sell it for much more. -Declan Some folks who didn't send theirs in did get visits by (otherwise unemployable) censusworkers. They went away when told to do so, I'm told. My favorite census story was the (true) one where the (nice old lady working for the Fedz) census worker got literally eaten by the dozen or so dogs some nonresponding dude kept in his yard.
Re: Congress proposes raiding census records.
At 12:38 PM -0400 10/25/00, David Honig wrote:
At 09:45 AM 10/25/00 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
I didn't answer even that question. I did not return the form.
My result was the same as yours: No visits or inquiries.
That's a shame. If I get fined $100, I can write a column about my
experience and sell it for much more.
-Declan
Some folks who didn't send theirs in did get visits by (otherwise
unemployable) censusworkers. They went away when told to do so,
I'm told.
My favorite census story was the (true) one where the (nice old lady
working for the Fedz) census worker got literally eaten by the dozen or so
dogs some nonresponding dude kept in his yard.
I had a "pre-visit" by a pair of women--perhaps Census workers,
perhaps not--about a year before the actual Census. They told me they
were listing structures on properties so that Census workers could
then make accurate tallies of the outbuildings, structures, etc.
While one of the women engaged me in conversation about how many
rooms my house had--I didn't tell her anything--the other woman
started to enter my side yard, through an archway.
I yelled over to her, "Please don't trespass on my property."
She retreated, and the first woman mumbled something about "not
liking a threatening tone." She said they were required by the rules
to check properties for evidence of numbers of residential units,
out-buildings, "granny flats," etc.
Angry by this time, as I am wont to get, I told the both of them that
the U.S. Census exists for one and only one purpose: counting the
population for the sole purpose of the apportionment of Congress.
It doesn't exist to track races (Japs, for example), to make pretty
maps of income, marital status, computer usage, sexual preferences,
numbers of pets, numbers of televisions and computers, and so on. It
just doesn't.
They retreated down my driveway (they had walked in...I assume they
were walking to all houses on the street). I half-way expected Yet
Another Stern Call from the Sheriff, but it never came (either that
or my phone line was busy, as is usually the case during the day).
When the Census form eventually arrived I got the short one. I
answered only the question about the number of adults living at the
address. I wrote "Aryan" for my race...I figured if the "favored
minorities" got to have dozens of sub-classes ("Asian American,
Pacific Islander, but not Chamorro Islands," or somesuch), then I
could certainly write down "Aryan."
[For those not in the U.S., the Census is a slave to political
correctness. We have the spectacle of those of Spanish descent, as in
"from Spain," writing down some variant of Hispanic for their "race,"
even though a Spaniard is of course of European, aka white, stock,
while most Mexicans are much different. Amerindian, or whatever. And
the Asians are divided into a dozen or so groups which lobbied for
inclusion in the Census. Meanwhile, Finns, Irish, Poles, Israelis,
Russians, Arabs, BUT NOT SPANIARDS, are all lumped in as "white."
Bizarre.]
In the Censuses of 1980 and 1990 I think I wrote down "Human Race" or
something like that. Now I try to be as politically incorrect as
possible.
Fucking statists.
--Tim May
--
-:-:-:-:-:-:-:
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: Congress proposes raiding census records.
I'd been planning to take the Fifth and write a rant to go with it explaining why. There were half a dozen things wrong with the forms and associated package purely aside from the questions themselves. But it wasn't a high priority, so I ended up not returning the form. At 09:45 AM 10/25/00 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote: I didn't answer even that question. I did not return the form. My result was the same as yours: No visits or inquiries. That's a shame. If I get fined $100, I can write a column about my experience and sell it for much more. -Declan On Wed, Oct 25, 2000 at 04:08:42AM -0400, Lucky Green wrote: I only answered the first question in the last census: how many people live at that address (or something to that effect). The rest I crossed out with fat black permanent marker. The result: no visits from the census taker. No inquiries from the Census Office. No fine. No repercussions of any kind. I am puzzled why anybody would have bothered to answer the remaining questions. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
