Lack of Anonymity in the Census:

For the first time since its inception in 1911, the Australian Census in August this year will be forgoing the usual practise of destroying any identifying information of respondents. Since 2001 we have had the option of deciding if our identifying information can be retained. This year, we won’t get a choice.

On December 18 last year, the Australia Bureau of Statistics announced that at the 2016 census in August it would, for the first time, retain all the names and addresses it has collected "to enable a richer and dynamic statistical picture of Australia".

Keeping names and addresses, we were quietly told, would enable government planners to do more rigorous studies of social trends.

For the past 45 years, it has been the ABS's practice to destroy that identifying information as soon as all other information on the census forms is transcribed - first onto magnetic tape, and now into vast digital data banks that allow statisticians to slice and dice at their whim.

In the 2001 census, the government first offered Australians a choice as to whether they would like their name-identified information kept. This year that opt-in system will be a compulsory system. Your name will be kept whether you like it or not.

The risks to privacy are blindingly obvious. The safest way to protect data is to not collect it at all. The second safest way is destroy that data after collection. There is no such thing as 100 per cent safely secured information. We know this from bitter experience. The last decade has seen a constant stream of unauthorised releases of apparently secure private information: the 2015 Ashley Madison hack being just the most embarrassing of these.

The Problem

To what extent do we have an interest in protecting ourselves against government excesses, and denying governments carte blanche on collecting information? We are not just data points in a planner's spreadsheet. They work for us. There are too many ways this information can and could be misused to target individuals or groups of people in future foreseeable and unforeseeable ways. You may not be worried about this government or the next one, but what about the one after that?

There are a lot of unanswered questions here. But no matter what firewalls the ABS places around access and matching, it is a truism that any data that can be used usefully can also be used illegitimately.

And of course, what are considered legitimate and illegitimate uses of data can change over time. Rules written in 2016 could be changed in 2026. The data collected now might be used in a very different way down the track.

Risks of the Census A History of Misuse:

The census performs many useful functions for society. However, there is widespread evidence of the misuse of census data. Hitler notably used the European Census in his conquests across Europe. The misuse of census data can be found in much of the world, including in our own nation. Even recently, privacy risks lead to public statements by politicians regarding the intrusiveness of census questions. The Washington Post quoted Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of encouraging citizens not to answer invasive questions.

- The Civil War

Along with the benefits of census information for war planning, the census can be used for methods of destruction as a war tactic. General Sherman used census data to locate targets during the famed Civil War March though Georgia.

- World War II and Japanese Internment

A specific example of the privacy risks of the US census can also be found in the 1940s. During World War II, Japanese-American citizens were rounded up and sent to internment camps. The Census Bureau might not have necessarily given out individual Japanese-American names or numbers, but the Bureau did work with US War Department to offer aggregated data about certain localities. Although there is still a lack of consensus concerning specific conclusions, the Census Bureau has issued a formal apology and now reports that the Bureau did not protect Japanese-Americans.

It has been recorded that even before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered the Census Bureau to collect information on "American-born and foreign-born Japanese" from the Census data lists. Information was gathered from the 1930 and 1940 censuses on all Japanese-Americans and then given to the FBI and top military officials. These sources point directly to the census information as one of the reasons that led to the internment of almost 110,000 Japanese-Americans on the West Coast, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens.

- United Kingdom

A recent example of abuse from abroad can be found in the United Kingdom. It recently has reached the public view that compulsory transfers were considered in Northern Ireland in 1972. A UK government top-secret memo has surfaced describing a plan to relocate Irish Catholics. The plan was written with census data. Although never implemented, the use of census data for non-statistical purposes has caused great concern in Europe.

- Germany

Germany has a contrasting history in census reporting. The most extreme example of census abuse is Hitler's use of the census to track minorities for extermination during the NAZI regime. Although this example remains perhaps the most horrifying abuse of the census, Germany's modern use of the census is exactly the opposite. In the aftermath of World War II, privacy protections were placed in the German Constitution. In the 1980s, the German Government instituted a law requiring more information to be provided on the national census. After a public outcry, the law was challenged in court. The issue was brought before the German Federal Constitutional Court by representatives who had been instrumental in the passage of the first German Data Protection Act during the 1970s. The court found the census law unconstitutional based upon what the court termed a fundamental right to informational self-determination implicit in the German Constitution.

After the court decision, the legislature amended the German Data Protection Act in 1990 to include the right of informational self-determination regarding government uses of information as well as information use in the private sector. By including private uses as well, Germany created one of the most broadly reaching privacy protections relating to the census.

European privacy concerns over the census have appeared in strong numbers. Mayer reports on several surveys taken in the 1970's regarding risks over privacy of census reports. In particular England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Northern Ireland reportedly protested in large numbers against the census' undermining of information privacy.



Keeping the census anonymous is actually better for the quality of the census.

Identification retention could have practical consequences as well. A population that is rightly worried about the security of their information is less likely to answer the census either accurately or at all. Indeed, this has historically been the ABS's big concern with keeping identification. They told a parliamentary committee in 1998 that the reduction in data quality from a reluctance to answer questions truthfully was not worth the trade-off.

Why would I "citizen A" answer census questions truthfully if I felt there was any risk that my answers could be used against me? For example for religious or ethnic persecutions?

A lower quality census would lead to lower quality government statistics across the board. A lot of things hang off the census. Census data guides electoral redistributions, Commonwealth grants, education funding and so on. Risking the integrity of all that in the hope that future data might be marginally more interesting to genealogical researchers and government planners seems like a terrible deal.

So please give the Australian People back an anonymous census!

**I will add links sources of information later today***