Yet more Big Brother run amok
Remember the Census? That questionaire thingy you have to fill out every ten years? Its purpose is to give the gov't a reasonably accurate count of the population and its distribution for purposes of determining Congressional districts. It's actually one of the few bureaucracies actually mentioned in the Constitution and thus actually legitimate for the gov't to be doing, at least as far as actual people-counting goes.
I've had some personal experience with the Census myself: in 2000 I was a "census enumerator," which is a fancy way of saying that I handed out & collected questionaire forms from a table set up in various dorms of the local university, UIUC. I was also part of a team that went out around town to parking garages, parks, & other places looking for homeless people to count. All in all it was an interesting and positive experience, despite the paperwork. Even my supervisor, who was either fundamentalist or evangelical (I'll admit I often have trouble telling the two apart), was fun to work with.
The local Census operated out of a rented office space in downtown Champaign, IL. There I saw for the first time the 100% corrugated cardboard office desk, a marvel of disposability and cardboard engineering which I'm guessing the gov't still managed to pay way too much for. (In case you're wondering, they were actually surprisingly sturdy.)
One other thing that sticks in my mind from that experience was hearing about the budget shortfall. Several weeks before the work was actually completed, word came down from the higher-ups that our branch (which, IIRC, covered Champaign County) had already gone over its budget by double. Well I suppose that one of the good things about gov't agencies compared to the private sector (good, at least, from their perspective) is that there is an almost endless pot o' gold to dip from--namely, taxpayers. Budget overruns are certainly a source of worry, but not nearly to the degree as is the case with private companies. How many gov't agencies have you ever heard of who had to close their doors forever because they went bankrupt? At worst, usually what happens is the agency will simply lay off low-level employees who don't make that much to begin with.
But I digress. As I said, overall the work experience was, despite its occasional tediousness, a positive one. I was one of the people who got to man tables at the college dorm. I both worked with and met an interesting mix of people. One student in particular, I recall, when asked about his ancestry on the form, was adamant in his insistence that he was precisely 1/3rd Irish. He either couldn't understand, or didn't care about, our explanations that being 1/3rd anything was genetically impossible. I hope he wasn't majoring in biology. If so, maybe he got a job working for the Discovery Institute.
Most people got the short form of the Census, which consists of six basic questions and is fairly quick and painless to fill out. A few, about 1 in 6 IIRC, got the long form, which went into more detail about all kinds of asinine things like what kind of plumbing you have in your house. The long form was probably a bit less painful and time-consuming to fill out (though not by much) than a 1040 tax form. Probably 90%+ of the complaints and questions we got from people, were because of the long form.
At the time, I sympathized with those for whom the long form gave difficulty, though being a part of "the machine," I didn't say much out loud. A few people complained that the gov't simply had no business knowing the kind of things they were asking. Quite frankly, they had a point. Still, the long form fell short of being truly excruciating, and there was some cold comfort in knowing that roughly 1/6th of the population also had to deal with it.
That's changed now, and not for the better.
Now comes news of three rather insidious expansions of the Census Department's inquisitiveness into true Big Brother territory. The first is the use of a much longer, and much more personal questionaire. At 73 questions it is more than twice as long as the previous long form. Click on the link above to see what kind of personal info they are now wanting to know.
The second expansion is that these forms are no longer sticking to the every-ten-years time scale, but have in fact already been mailed to a number of people. Might we eventually have to fill out Census forms yearly, as we already have to do with our tax returns? Major elections affected by Census numbers are, at most, every two years, you might say. But most of the info on the regular long form is already totally irrelevant to determining Congressional districts. It's being collected for no other reason than because the gov't wants to know. Both the nature of the questions, and the non-10-year timetable of the new Inquisition-length form do away with any facade of being used for redistricting purposes.
The third form of expansion is in the sheer insidiousness of this new form. It's only being mailed to a few isolated people in remote locations, apparently designed from the start to try to avoid the light of media glare. Furthermore, in a very Orwellian move, it not only threatens a $5,000 fine for not completing it, but essentially deputizes the recipient into an involuntary Inquisitor of anyone who lives in the same household. It forces the recipient, by threat of law, to extract all info from his housemates, a la the secret police of East Germany, the Soviet Union, and Orwell's Oceania. Can you imagine that conversation? "Yeah, I know these are intensely personal questions about your income, medical and psychiatric history. But if you don't tell me all they want to know, we're both screwed!" And in a move that Big Brother would be proud of, the form stipulates that any info collected may be shared with "other agencies." If the info you provide doesn't match up with the info the gov't has already obtained about you, look out!
A couple columns down I asked, What happens when the gov't becomes the enemy? The enemy of any expectation whatsoever of privacy, the enemy of being able to live free without fear of the gov't? How much more of this are we really prepared to put up with, for no good reason? Hopefully, not much more.
I've had some personal experience with the Census myself: in 2000 I was a "census enumerator," which is a fancy way of saying that I handed out & collected questionaire forms from a table set up in various dorms of the local university, UIUC. I was also part of a team that went out around town to parking garages, parks, & other places looking for homeless people to count. All in all it was an interesting and positive experience, despite the paperwork. Even my supervisor, who was either fundamentalist or evangelical (I'll admit I often have trouble telling the two apart), was fun to work with.
The local Census operated out of a rented office space in downtown Champaign, IL. There I saw for the first time the 100% corrugated cardboard office desk, a marvel of disposability and cardboard engineering which I'm guessing the gov't still managed to pay way too much for. (In case you're wondering, they were actually surprisingly sturdy.)
One other thing that sticks in my mind from that experience was hearing about the budget shortfall. Several weeks before the work was actually completed, word came down from the higher-ups that our branch (which, IIRC, covered Champaign County) had already gone over its budget by double. Well I suppose that one of the good things about gov't agencies compared to the private sector (good, at least, from their perspective) is that there is an almost endless pot o' gold to dip from--namely, taxpayers. Budget overruns are certainly a source of worry, but not nearly to the degree as is the case with private companies. How many gov't agencies have you ever heard of who had to close their doors forever because they went bankrupt? At worst, usually what happens is the agency will simply lay off low-level employees who don't make that much to begin with.
But I digress. As I said, overall the work experience was, despite its occasional tediousness, a positive one. I was one of the people who got to man tables at the college dorm. I both worked with and met an interesting mix of people. One student in particular, I recall, when asked about his ancestry on the form, was adamant in his insistence that he was precisely 1/3rd Irish. He either couldn't understand, or didn't care about, our explanations that being 1/3rd anything was genetically impossible. I hope he wasn't majoring in biology. If so, maybe he got a job working for the Discovery Institute.
Most people got the short form of the Census, which consists of six basic questions and is fairly quick and painless to fill out. A few, about 1 in 6 IIRC, got the long form, which went into more detail about all kinds of asinine things like what kind of plumbing you have in your house. The long form was probably a bit less painful and time-consuming to fill out (though not by much) than a 1040 tax form. Probably 90%+ of the complaints and questions we got from people, were because of the long form.
At the time, I sympathized with those for whom the long form gave difficulty, though being a part of "the machine," I didn't say much out loud. A few people complained that the gov't simply had no business knowing the kind of things they were asking. Quite frankly, they had a point. Still, the long form fell short of being truly excruciating, and there was some cold comfort in knowing that roughly 1/6th of the population also had to deal with it.
That's changed now, and not for the better.
Now comes news of three rather insidious expansions of the Census Department's inquisitiveness into true Big Brother territory. The first is the use of a much longer, and much more personal questionaire. At 73 questions it is more than twice as long as the previous long form. Click on the link above to see what kind of personal info they are now wanting to know.
The second expansion is that these forms are no longer sticking to the every-ten-years time scale, but have in fact already been mailed to a number of people. Might we eventually have to fill out Census forms yearly, as we already have to do with our tax returns? Major elections affected by Census numbers are, at most, every two years, you might say. But most of the info on the regular long form is already totally irrelevant to determining Congressional districts. It's being collected for no other reason than because the gov't wants to know. Both the nature of the questions, and the non-10-year timetable of the new Inquisition-length form do away with any facade of being used for redistricting purposes.
The third form of expansion is in the sheer insidiousness of this new form. It's only being mailed to a few isolated people in remote locations, apparently designed from the start to try to avoid the light of media glare. Furthermore, in a very Orwellian move, it not only threatens a $5,000 fine for not completing it, but essentially deputizes the recipient into an involuntary Inquisitor of anyone who lives in the same household. It forces the recipient, by threat of law, to extract all info from his housemates, a la the secret police of East Germany, the Soviet Union, and Orwell's Oceania. Can you imagine that conversation? "Yeah, I know these are intensely personal questions about your income, medical and psychiatric history. But if you don't tell me all they want to know, we're both screwed!" And in a move that Big Brother would be proud of, the form stipulates that any info collected may be shared with "other agencies." If the info you provide doesn't match up with the info the gov't has already obtained about you, look out!
A couple columns down I asked, What happens when the gov't becomes the enemy? The enemy of any expectation whatsoever of privacy, the enemy of being able to live free without fear of the gov't? How much more of this are we really prepared to put up with, for no good reason? Hopefully, not much more.
posted by Unknown at
3/23/2006 12:54:00 PM
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