28-01-2010, 03:35 PM
(This post was last modified: 28-01-2010, 03:38 PM by Bruce Clemens.)
My house's front door was tagged earlier this summer by an employee of a private company hired by the Department of Commerce in preparation for the Census. I saw the woman walking through the neighborhood with a hand-held unit of some sort. There was a sticker left on my front door explaining how important it was for me to cooperate when the Census comes.
I thought that was strange. It wasn't until later that I learned the unit was a GPS device and she was recording the GPS coordinates of every front door of every dwelling.
How is this, in any way, shape or form, justified by the Constitutional mandate of counting citizens? Dammit, if the government doesn't want people believing in "Conspiracy Theories" they need to stop doing things that are so damn suspicious!
[size=12]Census GPS: A Missile at Your Door [/SIZE]
From NPR in 2006:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...Id=5590541
Robert LaMacchia, head of the Census Bureau's geography division, says they'll capture the latitude and longitude of the front door of every house, apartment and improvised shelter they find.
"We will actually knock on doors and look for hidden housing units," he says. "We will find converted garages; from the outside, it may not look like anybody lives there."
But census workers will add each dwelling, legal or not, to the Census Bureau's Master Address File.
Recent proposed budget cuts have put part of this plan in jeopardy. But if Congress restores the money, the census will end up with the geographic coordinates — accurate to within 10 feet — for about 110 million residences.
But the Census Bureau can't, by law, share that list with anyone, even local governments. LaMacchia says the information has to be treated as confidential. Otherwise, people might lie, and the census wouldn't be accurate.
"People would not tell us about hidden housing units," LaMacchia says. "People would not respond to the questionnaire if they believed that that information would be turned over to law enforcement or code enforcement and become public information."
I thought that was strange. It wasn't until later that I learned the unit was a GPS device and she was recording the GPS coordinates of every front door of every dwelling.
How is this, in any way, shape or form, justified by the Constitutional mandate of counting citizens? Dammit, if the government doesn't want people believing in "Conspiracy Theories" they need to stop doing things that are so damn suspicious!
[size=12]Census GPS: A Missile at Your Door [/SIZE]
From NPR in 2006:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...Id=5590541
Robert LaMacchia, head of the Census Bureau's geography division, says they'll capture the latitude and longitude of the front door of every house, apartment and improvised shelter they find.
"We will actually knock on doors and look for hidden housing units," he says. "We will find converted garages; from the outside, it may not look like anybody lives there."
But census workers will add each dwelling, legal or not, to the Census Bureau's Master Address File.
Recent proposed budget cuts have put part of this plan in jeopardy. But if Congress restores the money, the census will end up with the geographic coordinates — accurate to within 10 feet — for about 110 million residences.
But the Census Bureau can't, by law, share that list with anyone, even local governments. LaMacchia says the information has to be treated as confidential. Otherwise, people might lie, and the census wouldn't be accurate.
"People would not tell us about hidden housing units," LaMacchia says. "People would not respond to the questionnaire if they believed that that information would be turned over to law enforcement or code enforcement and become public information."
"If you're looking for something that isn't there, you're wasting your time and the taxpayers' money."
-Michael Neuman, U.S. Government bureaucrat, on why NIST didn't address explosives in its report on the WTC collapses
-Michael Neuman, U.S. Government bureaucrat, on why NIST didn't address explosives in its report on the WTC collapses