The Thought Police and the American Community Survey

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The Thought Police and the American Community Survey

by John W. Whitehead

9/13/2004

 

There is a permanent government in Washington, D.C., that consists of

people whose power does not depend on election results. The largest

part of the permanent government is the bureaucracy, which has

approximately three million federal civilian employees. And believe it

or not, ten times that number is funded by American taxpayers through

government contracts and other venues. Thus, with one in ten of our

citizens working for the government, it is not surprising that the

bureaucratic presence is increasingly dominant in our lives.

 

Everywhere we look these days, we are either being watched, taxed or

some bureaucrat is placing another bit of information in our

government files. And now with the American Community Survey, the

latest census form that hits various households on a continuous basis,

the federal bureaucracy is thrusting its expansive tentacles toward us

in an attempt to invade every aspect of our lives.

 

Unlike the traditional census, which collects data every ten years,

the American Community Survey is taken every year at a cost of

hundreds of millions of dollars. And at 24 pages, it contains some of

the most detailed and intrusive questions ever put forth in a census

questionnaire. These concern matters that the government simply has no

business knowing, including a person's job, income, physical and

emotional health, family status, place of residence and intimate

personal and private habits.

 

The questions, as Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has said, are " both

ludicrous and insulting. " For example, the survey asks how many

persons live in your home, along with their names and detailed

information about them such as their relationship to you, marital

status, race and their physical, mental and emotional problems, etc.

The survey also asks how many bedrooms and bathrooms you have in your

house, along with the fuel used to heat your home, the cost of

electricity, what type of mortgage you have and monthly mortgage

payments, property taxes and so on. This questionnaire also demands to

know how many days you were sick last year, how many automobiles you

own and the number of miles driven, whether you have trouble getting

up the stairs and, amazingly, what time you leave for work every

morning. With the power of government agents under the USA Patriot Act

to secretly come into your home and rifle through your personal

belongings without a search warrant, it is dangerous to let the

government know when you will not be at home.

 

However, that's not all. The survey combines asinine questions with

highly detailed inquiries about your financial affairs. And the survey

demands that you violate the privacy of others by supplying the names

and addresses of your friends, relatives and employer. The

questionnaire also demands that you give other information on the

people in your home, such as their educational levels, how many years

of school were completed, what languages they speak and when they last

worked at a job, among other things.

 

In other words, you are being told by the government to inform and spy

on your family and friends—much like that described by George Orwell

in his futuristic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. " The family, " writes

Orwell, " had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police. It

was a device by means of which everyone could be surrounded night and

day by informers who knew him intimately. "

 

While some of the questions may seem to be fairly routine, the real

danger is in not knowing why the information is needed or how the

government will use it. One obvious concern with all this information,

especially that of a financial nature, is when the survey information

is matched against the information you have given the Internal Revenue

Service on your tax returns. Any discrepancies, intentional or not,

will most likely result in an IRS audit of your finances.

 

Unfortunately, the survey is not voluntary. Answering the questions is

not a polite request from the Census Bureau. You are legally obligated

to answer. If you refuse, the fines are staggering. For every question

not answered, there is a $100 fine. And for every intentionally false

response to a question, the fine is $500. Therefore, if a person

representing a two-person household refused to fill out any questions

or simply answered nonsensically, the total fines could range from

upwards of $10,000 and $50,000 for noncompliance.

 

Rep. Paul recently introduced an amendment that would have eliminated

funds for this intrusive survey in a spending bill. He explained on

the House floor that such information gathering went much too far in

violating the privacy of American citizens: " The amendment, " Paul has

said, " was met by either indifference or hostility, as most members of

Congress either don't care about or actively support government

snooping into the private affairs of citizens. "

 

There is also another concern with such an intrusive survey. It

represents a form of corporate welfare as well as a dangerous wedding

of government and business interests into the corporate state. This is

true in light of the fact that personal data collected on hundreds of

millions of Americans by the government is sold to private businesses.

The corporations that pigeon-hole us and hound us at home and the

office obviously enjoy such extensive information available from the

government. However, it is clearly not the duty of the government, and

most taxpayers do not want to subsidize the cost of such market research.

 

Article I of the U. S. Constitution makes it clear that the census

should be taken every ten years for the sole purpose of congressional

redistricting. What the founders intended was a simple head count of

the number of people living in a given area so that numerically equal

congressional districts can be maintained. The founders never

envisioned or authorized the federal government to continuously

demand, under penalty of law, detailed information from the American

people.

 

However, the founders did not anticipate a massive and meddlesome

federal bureaucracy or the daily onslaught of media images and

governmental scare tactics that the modern American faces. As a

consequence, they did not envision a nation where people would submit

to every government demand. Sadly, Americans have become so distracted

by the entertainment industry and the political maneuverings of the

government that many either do not seem to care or see no hope in

resistance.

 

But free government cannot survive if we do not rekindle the same

impulses that drove our forefathers to resist, strive for freedom and

draft a Bill of Rights. At the minimum, we have to call our

representatives to task and demand that they stop the federal

bureaucratic onslaught before it's too late.

 

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and

president of The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at

johnw.