Census Using GPS to Mark Front Door of Every Home in America

The Census Bureau's geography department plans to hire about 140,000 temporary workers supplied with GPS devices to mark the location of every home in the country. Robert LaMacchia, head of the Census Bureau's geography division explains: "We will actually knock on doors and look for hidden housing units," he says."We will find converted garages; from the outside, it may not look like anybody lives there."

The census is scheduled to begin early 2010. "The 2010 Census will be the largest peacetime mobilization in our nation's history," said Ralph Lee, Seattle Regional Director at the U.S Census Bureau.

The temporary workers would compile a list of about 110 million residences with their latitude and longitude coordinates accurate to about 10 feet from each front door. The Census Bureau claims this information will not be shared with anyone including local governments but the value of the data would make it sought after by many private companies.

Private companies have applied growing pressure to change the law and make the geographical information obtained by the Census Bureau available to them. This is concerning considering the lack of integrity and great level of influence private companies have shown to have had over government in the past.

Don Cooke, an executive from the mapping company TeleAtlas says "The laws basically say the intellectual property that's generated by the government belongs to us citizens, so I'd like to get it," he says. "Because I don't want to spend the money to go out and compile it!"

Web sites like Mapquest.com or maps.google.com usually show addresses within the correct city block, but they will point to the correct house less than half the time. While this information is useful to the general public it is not acceptable for military or police to plan or execute operations on such shaky grounds. The GPS data collected by the Census Bureau would change that.

The concept behind mapping the geographical location of a population is not a new one. The U.S. military uses a system similar to Google Earth as a tool for compiling intelligence data in Iraq and Afghanistan. Run by a standard laptop computer, the system allows intelligence officials from anywhere in the military to store data collected during operations and once the data is uploaded to the network it is discoverable by any other official with access to the network.

The military uses the system to track the known locations of insurgents, friendly local nationals, local police, military, and historical events. It can also be used to identify potentially dangerous routes of travel and key features in terrain surrounding an objective. All this information is compiled for the purpose of assisting military operations with sound local intelligence and to plan and coordinate future operations.

This system has proven to be very useful in military operations. The data being collected by the Census Bureau would allow such a system to be used the same way in the United States. One could see the potential danger if private companies were able to make use of this tool as well.

For example, the pentagon contracted and paramilitary civilian combat force Blackwater has been known to conduct operations on U.S. soil. Its employee's actions are not held accountable by military law or Geneva Conventions rules. A company contracted by the Pentagon and working closely in support of the CIA would not expect to be held accountable for their actions anyway.

In New Orleans, Blackwater employees deployed there in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina were armed and were believed by some to have confiscated weapons from local civilians. Blackwater would certainly want to get its hands on the data needed to establish an intelligence collecting system for the U.S. similar to what the military uses in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Knowing this makes Obama's July 2, 2008 speech when he deviated from his teleprompter and mentioned a civilian security force even more concerning.

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
Barack Obama

Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia later attempted to warn the American people about Obama. "That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."