US overseas Census

The US Census department is running an overseas Census

www.census.gov/overseas04


This can be done on the web and they require

"in order to access the 2004 Overseas Enumeration Test web site, your
browser must meet the Census Bureau's security requirements. Before
proceeding verify that your current browser's security settings are set to
enable high security or high encryption, or; obtain a browser that meets the
Census Bureau's security requirements at one of the sites below"

Microsoft Internet Explorer High Encryption Pack
AOL/Netscape High Encryption

***

so the potential filer may have to import a software which which
he/she might be reluctant to do in this era of worms and viruses.

The next problem is the necessity of this census?

Should Americans residing overseas be including in "US" census figures???

A broad spectrum of Americans live overseas. Some are doing so only
for a short period, a year or two. Some are retired. Some are those
who immigrated to the US but returned home for some reason.

The US has a partial count already with

1) those who file US returns

2) those who collected social security benefits

3) those who register and vote by absentee ballots.

Eventually, Homeland security will everntually monitor all departures
and entrees of US citizen to and from the US.

Earl

"Earl Evleth" wrote
| The US Census department is running an overseas Census
| www.census.gov/overseas04
| This can be done on the web and they require
| "in order to access the 2004 Overseas Enumeration Test web site,
| your browser must meet the Census Bureau's security requirements.
| Before proceeding verify that your current browser's security
| settings are set to enable high security or high encryption, or;
| obtain a browser that meets the Census Bureau's security
| requirements at one of the sites below"

Somewhat ironic given the US government until very recently prohibited the
export of web browsers that support strong encryption.

Owain

On 1/03/04 10:59, in article , "Owain"
wrote:

Somewhat ironic given the US government until very recently prohibited the
export of web browsers that support strong encryption.



That hadn't occurred to me.

Something else had, however.

From other information from a private source, I am sure
that US authorities is more and more interested in
what oversea's Americans are doing overseas and are making
inquiries to gather than information. In one area of
surveillance of overseas Americans has been stepped up.
We already know that travelers will, in a few months, be
hit with fairly intrusive questions if they wish to travel to the
USA (such as where one is staying, credit card numbers etc).

So there is data gathering occurring. The historical problem with
the US approach has been it was too broad and politically
directed to anybody mostly on "the left". No narrowing of the field.
My limited personal experience with the French DST indicates that they
narrow their investigations very quickly and do not waste time
on the greater mass of false leads.

In the 1950s US passports were refused or actually taken away
from ex-pats because they had expressed themselves on issues and the US
Government did not like those opinions. The CIA had infiltrated a number of
ex-pat groups overseas. This was largely discontinued when the Supreme
Court in 1958 decided that the US Government could not put a political test
on holding a passport. In the USA, however, the FBI maintained
some illegal procedures (i.e. the notorious COINTEL program of J. Edgar
Hoover) which were not discontinued until after Hoover's death. So the US
has a track record of intrusive and abusive data gathering and use of that
information for political repression.

The information card I have in hand says that the Census Bureau
holds all information "confidential" and that the information will
not be given to any other government agency (name, address, social
security). I assume that even if this is true that Congress could
change the law. Another 9/11 will produce another quantum jump
attack on civil liberties.

Next, the question is whether any of the information, if it ended up on the
computer files of Homeland Security, the FBI or CIA would be important.

The important information would be who are one`s friends, contacts,
where does one travel, bank and credit card information. This kind
of information is being sought in the inquiries I mentioned above
but is not contained in census data.

I will get the form tomorrow (I am going to pick up the form at either
the American Library in Paris or the US Embassy).

I will report back on this tomorrow.

Earl

On Mon, 01 Mar 2004 11:53:20 +0100, Earl Evleth
wrote:


From other information from a private source, I am sure
that US authorities is more and more interested in
what oversea's Americans are doing overseas and are making
inquiries to gather than information. In one area of
surveillance of overseas Americans has been stepped up.
We already know that travelers will, in a few months, be
hit with fairly intrusive questions if they wish to travel to the
USA (such as where one is staying, credit card numbers etc).

If the US government wishes to spy on citizens, a census wouldn't be
of much use. The restrictions on use of census data are such that it
would be impossibile to figure out anything about a particular person.

I used to use census data for research, and often the need to protect
privacy over-rode even the needs of legitimate research. For instance,
we once were doing social science research where income level was one
of the things we wanted to correlate with our results. We were forced
to use as our top income level an extremely broad category, because we
also had some geographical indicators and the census bureau maintained
that with a geographical indicator and a more specific income level,
we might be able to guess who some of the respondents were and find
out other things about them.

The census bureau doesn't even encode identifying information, and
their computer programs don't allow extracting information that would
result in being able to distinguish a small group of people. This
restriction applies also to their own employees.

They might very well want to be able to make estimates about potential
voters, potential taxpayers and potential future recipients of Social
Security benefits. I had heard that one of the reasons they want to
take a census of overseas citizens is that they were thinking of
including them in the population of the states they last resided in
for the sake of future voter redistricting. However, I doubt that it
will ever take off. For one thing, I don't think this early experiment
will be very successful. For another thing, overseas voters tend to be
more to the left than the average voter, their last residence is more
likely to be a major metropolitan area, and the current administration
has no incentive to add population to these areas.

-----------
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup