Did anyone else receive one of these? According to their web site, US Code Title 13, sections Section 141 and Section 193 your response is required by law.
In reality, those sections outline that The Secretary (who is presumably defined elsewhere) can take surveys as a part of their census process. It is Section 221 that requires you to respond:
Whoever, being over eighteen years of age, refuses or willfully neglects, when requested by the Secretary, or by any other authorized officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof acting under the instructions of the Secretary or authorized officer, to answer, to the best of his knowledge, any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him in connection with any census or survey provided…
That’s just a crock.
Oh, sure, census information is useful and all that. It’s just the principal of it. I guess I’ll have to ask the nice lady who came to my door for some evidence that she is an authorized officer or employee of the Deparment of Commerce, or a bureau or agency thereof acting under the instructions of The Secretary.
Heck, I’d pay the $100 if it weren’t for Title 18, Section 3571 (allegedly Section 3559 as well, but that seems to deal with imprisonment and not monetary fines). With it on the books, the “not greater than $100” fine becomes “not greater than $5000” fine. That really blows.
Comments
718 responses to “American Community Survey”
Actually, you need to do nothing. I never filled out mine and never sent a letter. I ignored the phone calls and rep visits as well.
The CB believes that when a resident fails to cooperate that it is simply a matter of convincing the resident of how important it is to supply the info. The CB doesn’t give up easily.
The ACS is not the census, so none of the questions are really required. The enumeration question is used as a check for the decennial census, which constitutes “sampling” which is not allowed by the Constitution.
Just a follow up to my recent posting of the letter. I should have added that you need to print the letter, enclose it with the survey with the number of occupants at your address. I sent mine in with the letter and have never heard a word further. Although, they could attack at any time….
Mark
You SHOULD blame this idiocy on the CB because THEY are the ones who designed the survey and marketed it to congress. The CB invented the majors of social and behavioral science along with various surveys to improve job security. It has evolved into a bloated, money wasting entity.
Your community should be speaking directly to voters as to what is in the best interest of the community and not accept what the federal gov wants to force on it. The ACS feeds the whole nanny state thing. The American public is too stupid to control their own lives and the local and state govs are too inept to govern. So the federal gov has to create all sorts of programs to change that. Programs which the feds have no right to create in the first place.
THE GOV HAS NO BUSINESS COLLECTING ANY OF THIS INFO AT ALL!!!!
It is a violation of the 4th and 10th amendments. Congress and the CB know it and don’t care. The ACS is used to screen for individuals they might need for future surveys, which is a violation of the restrictions spelled out in Title 13. But hey, If congress can violate the Constitution, there’s nothing it won’t do.
You will not be fined or jailed. The backlash against the CB would be to great. The ACS was created because of the backlash during the 2000 census, when these questions were part of the decennial census. Congress allowed the “mandatory” on the survey to increase the response rate with the stipulation that no one would be fined.
Even if we grant that this information may be useful for the stated purpose of city planning, how is that information enhanced in any way by requiring the specific identities of the respondents? Because to me that is the real problem here – it isn’t so much giving the information that I object to, it is identifying it as MY information. So fine, it is helpful to know how many doctors and teachers and plumbers are in the community, great. But why do you need to know which individual, by name, is which profession? Of what possible use are those individual identifications to city planning? Oh, so it is very useful to know 50% of the commuters hit the road at the same time? Well ok, but what on earth does knowing the commuters’ individual names add to that revelation? I cannot conceive what difference that makes.
On the other hand, were the information collected anonymously in some way (and I was satisfied that it was indeed totally anonymous) I wouldn’t really care that somewhere it is recorded that in my community there is one more white male over 50 with heart problems who makes over $100,000 doing this and that and lives in a three bedroom house and leaves for work at 5 AM. What I object to is being specifically identified as that guy, and specifically identifying where I live. That is what makes the ACS intrusive because that is what makes the ACS genuinely personal, the moment you connect the data to an individual person. It is also what makes the information potentially dangerous, and that in turn makes the future security of that information a very legitimate concern.
But what if you simply didn’t link the info to an individual? If there were truly no way to tell whose information it is then I don’t really care who sees it or who may steal it. It is the difference between my doctor conversationally mentioning that he is treating 10 patients for alcoholism or drug addiction or STDs or whatever, and him telling me the identities of those 10 people. The former is just quantitative, academic information, but putting names to that information transforms it into deeply personal and sensitive information. And that is exactly what the ACS does by requiring the respondents to be specifically identified.
And being asked to give deeply personal information to a Census Bureau I have no reason or desire to trust is an insult to my sensibilities. And being legally compelled to give it is an outrage.
So, among the various issues I have with the ACS, the crucial one for me is that it is not anonymous. A survey is by definition looking for quantitative information in a given population as a whole, meaning it is not concerned with connecting individual identities to the data. You don’t read “this poll says Obama has a 53% approval rating, and here’s the names and addresses of those that approve.” My responses should be blended into everyone else’s and thus become no longer distinguishable as mine (except to me). I know that eventually happens here but you don’t need my name to do that.
You don’t need my name to do a survey. But once my name goes on the ACS it is no longer a survey, it now becomes a file, or a dossier. My file of deeply personal information.
I don’t mean to imply someone has some sinister plan for my information. But I am saying that being asked to send a comprehensive file of personal information is a completely different issue than being asked to complete a survey to help my community, which is how it is being incorrectly framed. Of course people are going to have some serious concerns when you compel them to just send along a big fat file of personal and potentially sensitive information. And those concerns are perfectly legitimate, and you can have those concerns without believing there is necessarily sinister intent behind the ACS.
And please don’t bring up the silliness about the identities being separated from the data when the data is entered. That would mean the city planners and the like never see the identities. But if that is true it in fact makes my point exactly: that the identities aren’t necessary, or aren’t even relevant, to effectively using the data for city planning. But if they aren’t necessary why are they collected when that is precisely what makes the ACS so intrusive? If they really are not necessary then it was a genuinely stupid idea to require them.
It seems to me that if the survey were completely anonymous you could get all the data you need without disturbing so many people and without endangering their security. Ideally it would be voluntary too, though your response rate would probably go down in that case. But perhaps for the future an anonymous (at least) survey would be the way to get the necessary data without creating all these other concerns.
Until such time, as this so-called survey is presently conducted I never will respond to it. When mine arrived I sat down pencil in hand, ready to complete it like a good citizen, but didn’t have to go far to realize I would never return such a thing. I was stunned by what I was reading, and for the first time in my life I felt I was being violated by my own government. And I would go to jail rather than back down on this one. I am 58 and this is my first act of civil disobedience.
By the way I do not blame the Census people for this idiocy, I believe this one is on Congress.
Use this letter for the 2010 census
To Whom it May Concern,
Pursuant to Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution, the only information you are empowered to request is the total number of occupants at this address. My “name, sex, age, date of birth, race, ethnicity, telephone number, relationship and housing tenure” have absolutely nothing to do with apportioning direct taxes or determining the number of representatives in the House of Representatives. Therefore, neither Congress nor the Census Bureau have the constitutional authority to make that information request a component of the enumeration outlined in Article I, Section 2, Clause 3. In addition, I cannot be subject to a fine for basing my conduct on the Constitution because that document trumps laws passed by Congress.
Interstate Commerce Commission v. Brimson, 154 U.S. 447, 479 (May 26, 1894)
“Neither branch of the legislative department [House of Representatives or Senate], still less any merely administrative body [such as the Census Bureau], established by congress, possesses, or can be invested with, a general power of making inquiry into the private affairs of the citizen. Kilbourn v. Thompson, 103 U.S. 168, 190. We said in Boyd v. U.S., 116 U. S. 616, 630, 6 Sup. Ct. 524,―and it cannot be too often repeated,―that the principles that embody the essence of constitutional liberty and security forbid all invasions on the part of government and it’s employees of the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of his life. As said by Mr. Justice Field in Re Pacific Ry. Commission, 32 Fed. 241, 250, ‘of all the rights of the citizen, few are of greater importance or more essential to his peace and happiness than the right of personal security, and that involves, not merely protection of his person from assault, but exemption of his private affairs, books, and papers from inspection and scrutiny of others. Without the enjoyment of this right, all others would lose half their value.’”
Note: This United States Supreme Court case has never been overturned.
Respectfully,
A Citizen of the United States of America
Beth here again. Sent it back with Refused 11/28 and haven’t heard a thing since. I’ll update in a month or so, but I think I’m done!
I’m hoping there’ll be a law that from now on, anyone who runs for office- at any level, has to show a certificate which indicates he or she has passed the US Constitution course. Then every couple of years he or she has to renew this certificate (8 hours CE). Actually this proposal applies to all the current congress people. No exception. How do they teach this in law school?
They may be forced to get it other ways….. they can try. That is no reason to fill out the survey and link up info which they can’t put together.
I don’t work for the gov. My time is my time and it doesn’t matter how valuable the info is when it violates the 4th and 10 amendments and privacy/private property laws.
After the 90 day harassment cycle nothing else happens. Nothing. The CB field reps are annoying pests who have no ability to enforce the harsh language used to get the public to fill out the ACS. The survey is designed to scare people. Those of us who told the CB to shove it learned that they are paper tigers. The Constitution is on our side. I encourage all to read it, understand it and to force the gov and the elected officials who to an oath to protect, defend and FOLLOW the Constitution.
We received our ACS the day before Thanksgiving 2010. Today I decided to open it and start filling it out. I kinda like doing surveys, and work with collected data all the time, so I am always curious about how the questions are asked to produce intelligent condensed data to be used to find trends, etc. I was about 1/2 way through the detailed portion (it was when they asked for the address of my work, or at least the cross streets) when all of a sudden my pen stopped. WTF?? How many minutes does it take me to get to work? What’s my annual income, from all sources including dividends??? Surveys are supposed to be general, “between 25 and 35” and such. No WAY was I going to fill this out.
So the problem is my co-hab-boyfriend, who is much more fatalistic about this. “If I don’t do it, they’ll just get it for somewhere else, AND find a way to punish me.” So he’s inclined to send it in. Mine is 1/2 filled out already. I tried to get him to wait another two weeks for the 2nd copy to arrive. But he’s got more fear and fatalism. So I went through and answered everything with “R” or Refused to Answer. I’m not 100% happy with the compromise, but I’m hoping the lady who first suggested the “R” method was right.
Sure was great finding this site. And now I have to keep coming back to get the updates on JoRingo’s conversations. I’m so jealous! I don’t think that fast on my feet to be able to talk down a bureaucrat! You have a gift, my friend. “how tight to roll it and how hard to cram it up there…” I’m STILL laughing my butt off!
Peace, my fellow Americans.
I’m wondering will the “case” ever be “closed”? It’s been a while and I have not been bothered by any reps. but I can’t stop thinking about it. Thanks God I’m more aware of many important issues and have learned to watch my back.
Here in TX too.