Wire Report

Census Data Not So Confidential After All -

(WIRE/IndInst) – The current $350 million ad campaign for the 2010 Census, including the much-maligned $2.5 million Super Bowl spots, urges individuals to “Tell your story.” The Census Bureau is particularly eager for minorities and illegal immigrants to do so, as they are traditionally believed to be the most undercounted.

Yet widespread non-compliance, especially among those most likely to be discriminated against by a majority, may not be rooted strictly in the “ignorance” the ads are designed to overcome. History—including very recent history—shows that the information provided to the Census can be used against you.

The most recent examples occurred in 2002 and 2003, when the Census Bureau turned over information it had collected about Arab-Americans to Homeland Security.¹

Data from the 1940 Census was used to intern Japanese, Italian, and German Americans following the U.S.’s entry into the war, and to monitor and persecute others who escaped internment². In addition to providing geographic information to the War Department, the Census Bureau released the name, address, age, sex, citizenship status and occupation of Japanese Americans in the Washington, D.C., area to the Treasury Department in response to an unspecified threat against President Franklin Roosevelt in 1943.³

There may well be other instances of such data sharing of which we remain unaware, as the full scope of the personal information released during World War II has only recently been brought to light.

Thus, while the Census Bureau assures us that “your confidentiality is protected. Title 13 requires the Census Bureau to keep all information about you and all other respondents strictly confidential,” these exceptions negate such assurances. Of course, the release of the “strictly confidential” data was also perfectly legal: during World War II, under the terms of the Second War Powers Act, and more recently, under the terms of the USA PATRIOT Act, now extended by the Obama administration.

In preparation for this year’s census, 140,000 workers were hired to collect GPS readings for every front door in the nation. Such pinpoint precision will certainly simplify the process of locating any individual or group that may be identified as a threat to “national security” in the future. Remember, for example, the 1976 Senate Report⁴ in which 26,000 Americans were slated for roundup by the FBI in the event of a national emergency at the height of the Cold War. Now that the U.S. Government’s Terrorist Watchlist has exceeded one million, the GPS data acquired could be instrumental in accomplishing such a roundup.

Meanwhile, the data is also shared a little more broadly than advertised. Stanford University recently joined UC Berkeley, Duke, the University of Michigan, UCLA, and others in having its very own census data center. As the director of the new center explained, “The Census Bureau is very interested in making the centers more accessible to scholars who can use the data they provide.”

As Henry Brady, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and principal investigator for the California Census Research Data Centers helpfully added: “We’re trying to make centers where lots of federal agencies will let us use their data.”

While reassurances are repeated that the data is held under the strictest security, and will only be used for innocuous projects like “government programs and solutions to our problems,” do we really want academics to social engineer policy solutions based on sensitive personal data? After all, they may turn out to be no more desirable than the “solutions” provided by government programs like internment and renditioning. Without the protections afforded by a right to privacy, there’s little chance of escaping a political will to enforce discriminatory policies.

This “mission creep” for the Census thus pushes up against a level of discomfort no amount of advertising dollars can likely assuage. Many will no doubt choose to follow former Senate majority leader Trent Lott’s advice to skip any Census questions they feel violates their privacy—which may well include any exceeding the Constitution’s mandate for an “actual Enumeration.” Unfortunately, choosing privacy now costs more: legislation recently passed raises the fine for “anyone over 18 years old who refuses or willfully neglects to complete the questionnaire or answer questions posed by census takers” from a limit of $100 to $5,000—a fact not advertised even in the small print.

Source(s): ¹The New York Times “Homeland Security Given Data on Arab-Americans” By LYNETTE CLEMETSON, Published: July 30, 2004 • ² New York Times “Census blamed in internment of Japanese” By STEVEN A. HOLMES – Friday, March 17, 2000 • ³Scientific American “Confirmed: The U.S. Census Bureau Gave Up Names of Japanese-Americans in WW II” By JR Minkel March 30, 2007 • ⁴Church Report Book II INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES AND THE RIGHTS OF AMERICANS – April 1976

© 2010 The Independent Institute

Mary L.G. Theroux, Senior Vice President, The Independent Institute

Mary L. G. Theroux is Senior Vice President of The Independent Institute. Having received her A.B. in economics from Stanford University, Ms. Theroux is Managing Director of Lightning Ventures, L.P., a San Francisco Bay Area investment firm, and Vice President of the C.S. Lewis Society of California. She is former Chairman of the Advisory Board for the Salvation Army of San Francisco, and is on the National and San Francisco Advisory Boards of The Salvation Army. Having been a director of nine corporations and three foundations, she was also Chairman of Garvey International, Inc., and Co-founder and President of San Francisco Grocery Express. Articles on Ms. Theroux have appeared in Business Week, Forbes, Savvy, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications.

The Smoking Argus

OFFICIAL STATEMENT – Senate Homeland Security Committee discusses the Obama administration’s failures in dealing with the Christmas Day bomber. Sen. Collins expresses her incredulity that the bomber was interrogated for only 50 minutes before getting his Miranda rights. (FULL TRANSCRIPT)

Related Material(s)
	GOP Weekly Address, Senator Collinf (ME) January 30, 2010 TRANSCRIPT

Source(s): Republican National Committee • GOP Weekly Address YouTube Channel

Wire Report

Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies

As director of information policy studies, Jim Harper focuses on the difficult problems of adapting law and policy to the unique problems of the information age. Harper is a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. His work has been cited by USA Today, the Associated Press, and Reuters. He has appeared on Fox News Channel, CBS, and MSNBC, and other media. His scholarly articles have appeared in the Administrative Law Review, the Minnesota Law Review, and the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly. Recently, Harper wrote the book Identity Crisis: How Identification Is Overused and Misunderstood. Harper is the editor of Privacilla.org, a Web-based think tank devoted exclusively to privacy, and he maintains online federal spending resource WashingtonWatch.com. He holds a J.D. from UC Hastings College of Law.

CATO- Thanks to the push for a more transparent Congress, we’re getting a better look at what new health care regulations might shape up to be. Alas, not a very good look: with weak justifications, the Senate Finance Committee is working on a strange “plain language” description of the bill, and apparently not planning to read or release the final language¹.

I’ve found something worth noting, though, in each of the bill versions I’ve seen. The Senate Finance Committee’s Rube Goldberg plan for health care in America has a provision establishing paragraph talking about “Eligibility Verification.”

If you want to access the “state exchanges” or collect the federal tax credits created by the bill, your eligibility will have to be verified. Here’s what it says:

Eligibility Verification. In order to prevent illegal immigrants from accessing the state exchanges or obtaining federal health care tax credits, the Chairman‘s Mark requires verification of the following personal data. Name, social security number, and date of birth will be verified with Social Security Administration (SSA) data. For individuals claiming to be U.S. citizens, if the claim of citizenship is consistent with SSA data then the claim will be considered substantiated. For individuals who do not claim to be U.S. citizens but claim to be lawfully present in the United States, if the claim of lawful presence is consistent with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data then the claim will be considered substantiated. Individuals whose status is expected to expire in less than a year are not allowed to obtain the tax credit. Individuals whose claims of citizenship or lawful status cannot be verified with federal data must be allowed substantial opportunity to provide documentation or correct federal data related to their case that supports their contention.

CHAIRMAN’S MARK
AMERICA’S HEALTHY FUTURE ACT of 2009
Page 27

Translation: Every American who wants to access a “state exchange” or get the tax credits in the bill would have to submit data about themselves to the Social Security Administration or Department of Homeland Security for verification. If you don’t do it, no exchanges or tax credits. If your data doesn’t match, no exchanges or tax credits, unless you can convince SSA or DHS bureaucrats that you are who you say you are.

If you’re one of the millions of people about whom the Social Security Administration has bad data, plan to spend long hours waiting in line to plead with indifferent federal bureaucrats for health care access. When attacks and complications on the verification system break down, they’ll move to “strengthen” the system. Get ready to dig up your birth certificate—they’ll want to scan it into their computers—plan to be photographed and fingerprinted, and get ready to stand in line for your national ID card.

Related Materials
	Chairman’s Mark – America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009 (PDF 1.53 Mb)

Source(s): ¹Washington Examiner “Congressional leaders fight against posting bills online” by: Susan Ferrechio, Published Oct. 6, 2009

Allison Bricker

DES MOINES, IOWA – An H1N1 (Swine-Flu) quarantine document found on the Iowa Department of Public Health¹ (IDoPH) website quickly circulated the internet causing a public relations headache for health officials in Iowa. Public health officials responded that the form was merely a template based on the limited use of such quarantine orders of the past and that no such orders were currently in effect. Further, IDoH, Public Information Officer, Polly Carver-Kimm states that she does not expect to see any such orders issued this fall due to the spread of H1N1.

Ms. Carver-Kimm went on to say that if the need ever did arise, public officials in Iowa most often opt to request voluntary home quarantine out of respect for an individual’s rights. She continued, that a form causing the uproar was used sparingly in the case of several homeless Iowans who contracted Tuberculosis (TB) and where thus confined to the hospital for treatment and monitoring.

From a historical standpoint, the authority to enforce quarantine is considered a state police power reserved explicitly under the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution². Dating back to as early as 1796, Congress explicitly sought to restrict involvement by the federal government except in manners of outbreaks crossing state lines, borders, and ports of entry. Moreover, the 4th Congress enacted legislation to ensure the federal government was confined further to a supervisory role, allowing intervention only upon dereliction of a state(s) duty to control the spread beyond the initial outbreak or if the situation deteriorates into domestic insurrection, or requested by the several states governments.³

Additionally, several Supreme Court⁴ and district court decisions ^{5, 6} have upheld this principle of state’s rights in conjunction with the right of the people to challenge their quarantine under the Tenth Amendment when such quarantine is found to be “unreasonable, unjust, and oppressive”.

(PDF 4MB)

Nevertheless, the federal government under the Bush administration sought to circumvent the Constitution and the reinforcement thereof by numerous Supreme Court decisions in order to seize additional unConstitutional powers to the federal government under HSPD-5, HSPD-8, and P.L. 109-364, § 1076.

Coordinating the specific steps of what many see as further federal intrusion, the Homeland Security Council⁷ (HSC) issued the “National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Implementation Plan” (NSPIIP) in 2006 linking the federal government’s response to the World health Organization’s (WHO) “Phase of Pandemic Alert”. Currently the WHO phase is at its highest level, pandemic-alert 6 in response to the outbreak of H1N1 from this past spring. Consequently, according to the NSPIIP, the response to a phase 6 alert instructs the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in Conjunction with DHS to:

“Activate domestic quarantine stations and ensure coordination at State, local, and tribal level, especially with health care resources.”

National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Implementation Plan, 2006
Page 37

As of the writing of this report, Ms. Carver-Kimm has not received briefing from either DHS or HHS regarding the “domestic quarantine stations”. Additionally, calls placed to both the DHS and HHS have yielded no response regarding whether or not the quarantine stations are currently active as called for in NSIIP in conjunction with WHO alert level 6.

Source(s): ¹Iowa Department of Health Quarantine Order • ²CRS, FEDERAL and STATE QUARANTINE and ISOLATION AUTHORITY, by:Kathleen S. Swendimann, Attrny. & Jenifer K. Elsa, Attrny. – published January 23rd, 2007, Summary • ³ 5 Annals of Congress 1349-59 (1796) • ⁴ MORGAN’S STEAMSHIP CO. V. LOUISIANA BOARD OF HEALTH, 118 U. S. 455 (1886) • ⁵ State v. Snow 324 S.W.2d 532 (Ark. 1959) • ⁶ Wong Wai v. Williamson 103 F. Rep. 10 (1900) & Jew Ho v. Williamson 103 F. Rep. 15 (1900) • ⁷Homeland Security Council, “National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Implementation Plan” 2006 •