Mandatory Census Bureau Survey

Over the last decade I have had my personal information “possibly compromised” by the Veteran's Administration, the SC Department of Revenue, and the US Department of Energy. This week my wife and I received notification from the US Department of Commerce Director, U.S. Census Bureau that our address had been randomly chosen to receive “a very important national survey, the American Community Survey.”

The Constitution specifically requires an “enumeration” every 10 years for the purpose of apportioning the House of Representatives. The Federal Government has vastly expanded this function to the extent that census information is withheld from the public for 72 years due to privacy reasons. The currently available census data is 1940. The data is in high demand, and computer servers nearly crashed several years ago when the 1940 census became available for the first time.

Businesses and financial markets have come to depend on information collected by the government. At 10:30AM every Wednesday the Weekly Petroleum Status Report is released by the Energy Information Administration within the Department of Energy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the unemployment statistics and the Census Bureau the Gross Domestic Product estimates along with many other measures on a regular basis. All this and more is available to the political party in power on a 24/7 basis. Other agencies like the VA, IRS, HUD, HHS, FBI, NSA etc have much more data on individual Americans. This information gathering costs taxpayers about one billion dollars each year. It is hard to know exactly since the government does not budget and does not use Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

As our lives become increasing digitized, it is important to remember that fallible humans are collecting and using this data – sometimes for nefarious purposes. Big Brother is definitely real and active.