Uses and Misuses of Census Bureau Data
Census people have a standard line for citizens nervous about privacy: “You divulge more when you apply for a credit card than you do on the census.”
Still, the census gets pretty personal, asking people about their race, age, family or “unmarried partner.” And that’s the short form. The long form wants everything from income and mortgage to the number of bedrooms and plumbing facilities.
What’s more, the Census Bureau intends to get it. The threat of a $100 fine for refusing to cooperate is “rarely enforced,” says census spokeswoman Rhea Farberman in Washington, but census-takers routinely follow up on any form that’s incomplete by even a single question, and “pursue people till they give us the information.” There’s a carrot with the stick--constant assurances that everyone’s answers are not just “important” but “also safe.”
Fears about safety may not be soothed by the credit card comparison, because most such fears aren’t over commercial use. It’s common knowledge that direct mail and telemarketing companies compile lists of good prospects by drawing on a combination of private and public lists, computer-manipulated to select people with desired characteristics. The public data includes auto registrations, tax rolls, voter lists, birth records and, of course, census reports, with their summary information about income and lifestyle by locale.
But people are only irritated by junk mail and junk calls. Such lists aren’t actually read but fed into a computer, “merged” with other lists, refined and turned into address labels or call rosters, unseen by human eye.
The greater fears are political. The data is available to those with prejudices as well as products, and people have memories of human rights violations more recent than World War II. The census does, among other things, identify the rich, the poor, the old, Latinos, Asians, probable homosexuals and others, and “while I don’t think the mind-set here is the same today,” says one gay man, “who knows about tomorrow?”
Today’s census questions go beyond the original intent--counting citizens for congressional reapportionment--but “each question has a purpose, usually federal,” says census spokesman Ray Bancroft. “There are 80 different federal programs based on the census information,” including housing and welfare programs (which use income, housing and age data), child and adult education (data on family members, years of schooling) and urban planning (questions on commuting and cars).
The government’s interest is statistical and descriptive. Names are required, but it isn’t personal: it’s just to ensure that everyone is counted and no one is counted twice. Social Security numbers aren’t necessary, because individual records aren’t shared and therefore matched to other records.
Everyone says the bureau has a good record on confidentiality. Only “aggregate” information is released, describing not individuals but census blocks averaging 30 to 85 people. All personal records are sealed away for 72 years, the estimate of average life span made in 1952. Information from those records is given only to the particular person (with proof required). After 72 years, the records go into public archives.
Census employees are under oath to maintain confidentiality, and under threat of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine if they don’t: In 1982, a field operations supervisor who allowed address lists to be taken from a district office and copied did get a prison term. As a bureau, says Farberman, “we have never shared with anyone, even the President of the United States.”
Not quite. The bureau may not share individual records, but it does share, and widely, its information on groups. This is “purely demographic information,” says spokesman Rudolf Brewington, reports that “show where people live but don’t identify the people.”
They may be dangerous enough. During World War II, for example, the bureau provided the Army with 1940 census block information that made it possible to round up and imprison people of Japanese descent. “So much,” wrote David Burnham in “The Rise of the Computer State” (1983), “for the benign quality of aggregate information.”
“Under wartime pressures,” says Burnham now, “the bureau bent.” In World War I, he says, it even gave the Justice Department actual names to “go after draft dodgers.” Some day, conceivably, the rule of confidentiality could be not just bent but rescinded, opening a great reservoir of personal matter.
It gets ever closer to view. This year, the bureau introduced its new Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing System, or TIGER file--a computerized mapping system allowing one to “zoom in,” says Bancroft, on smaller areas within census blocks, including street names and a range of street numbers. This is a boon to census workers, who can plot in computer-assigned names and addresses then fan out to contact people who haven’t responded by mail.
Computer-merged with census data, it’s a benefit to anyone eager to locate specific individuals within an area of aggregate characteristics. The bureau “is fulfilling the letter of the law if it’s not releasing individual data,” says Barbara Bailar, executive director of the American Statistical Assn. in Alexandria, Va., and a former associate director at the Census Bureau. But “some inferences could be drawn about group data,” and Bailar, for one, finds it “worrisome.”
City officials, she surmises, could note areas with a lot of people and public housing, assume overcrowding and “go in to do some evictions.” Immigration officials could note blocks with a high count of Mexicans, say, and “do a raid.”
It may be a moot worry. Given the explosion of records and record-sharing now, the Census Bureau may be offering nothing unique.
Consider the Netherlands, where outcry over the 1971 census led to its cancellation. Many people assume that memories of World War II roundups were the persuasive factor, but the 1947 and 1960 census weren’t challenged.
Instead, it was partly the 1960s mentality, partly a reaction to unusually extensive questions and partly an awareness of what computers could do. But the main reason the government readily canceled the census, says Andreas Boekhorst at the Dutch consulate in Washington, was that “the statistics could be obtained as easily through other means.”
