Census Invades Your Privacy and Trespasses On Your Property

Byron Ruffin

Taxpayer dollars are funding the census of 2010 in which 140,000 Census Bureau employees will be sent on a mission to collect the geographic coordinates of the front door of every home in the United States. Privacy advocates, Civil Libertarians, and many American citizens alike are growing increasingly concerned that the data collected by the 2010 census is an intrusion into Americans rights.

In development since 2007, the census incorporates GPS enabled census workers who are instructed to mark the location of every front door to within 40 feet. Of course many homes are not located closely enough to public property for this data to be obtained without the workers trespassing on private property.

The workers are not required to speak to the residents or obtain permission from them to wander onto their private property. For those who have longer driveways or live in rural areas with their homes set far within their property it seems that "no trespassing" signs do not deter the workers from obtaining the location of their residence.

There have already been many citizens who have complained that the census workers ignored the "no trespassing" signs posted on their property. It is still unclear if any of these residents have sought legal action against the trespassers or whether or not it is legal for the workers to be intruding on privately owned property without notification, let alone permission.

Law enforcement authorities are not even allowed to legally enter a residence without a warrant or probable cause to believe a crime is being committed at the time or one has just been committed and the perpetrator of the crime has immediately gone into that residence - or they chased him/her into the place and never lost sight of them.

In addition to trespassing and marking American's front doors with GPS latitude and longitude coordinates, big brother requires yet even more information from residents in a survey form consisting of about 70 questions. The American Community Survey will mail the form out to millions of residents nation-wide which asks many personal questions including the cost of rent/mortgage for the home, the race of all residents, details of the plumbing, the length of the residents commute to work, and if any residents have a disability.

Americans who receive the survey are required under penalty of law to complete the form. The penalty for neglecting to return the form is a $100 dollar fine and falsifying information on the form can subject the resident to a $500 dollar fine. Refusing to answer the questions on the survey might also prompt a census worker to arrive at the home and interview the residents to obtain the information and refusing to answer those questions will likely only cause to worker to interview neighbors instead in an attempt to obtain the information.

The data compiled by the Census Bureau has been used in the past to target specific ethnic groups for reasons of "national security". In the 1940's the information was used to locate Japanese-Americans and place them in internment camps. After 9/11 the census data was helpful in locating Arabs across the country.