Making Sense of the Census???
As you may or may not be aware Tuesday, May 16, 2006 is Census Day. The main function of the Census to collect basic population information, details on the lives of Canadians (Health and Welfare - Living with Disabilities and special needs of Canadians), Education, and Sociocultural data (Citizenship data, Language, demographics, electoral planning). By law, your information is kept secure and confidential. The Government does these periodically to keep their data up to date so that policy and services can adequately serve the communities we live in. Not bad. So why are some people are not to keen on this year’s Census?
Statistics Canada outsourced hardware, software and printing services needed for the census to Lockheed Martin Canada, IBM Canada and Transcontinental Printing Canada. Stats Can claim none of the contractors will be involved in collecting or handling census responses. The HOT issue here is WHY aren’t Canadians getting the job done and more Canadian Companies (not just Canadian subsidiaries of U.S. Companies) getting these contracts.
Lockheed Martin (Canada) inherits their scanning technology from the US Parent, Lockheed Martin, who first developed census software for the 2000 U.S. Census. Gee how well did the next election go after that…
IBM is handling the online portion of the Census. With their record on dealing (selling off) sensitive Census data has others up in arms as well.
Don Rogers founder of CountMeOut.ca. Mr Roger’s is one of many who feel that it is a little unethical to use public money to contract out to a weapons manufacturer for our Census. After all most of Lockheed Martin Canada’s parent company’s sales (US$ 37 Billion at 2005) were from Defence. Contracts like the Missile Defence Weapons Systems which, for now, Canada is still opposed to.
Fears the U.S. government could somehow still access the data are not too far fetched. Both IBM and Lockheed Martin are governed by USA Patriot Act and the USA Homeland Security Act. All US companies and their subsidiaries are required on demand to release to the US Homeland Security all data held. No foreign law (i.e., Canadian Law) can override this EVEN IF IT’S OUR INFO.
It should also be noted that The Patriot Act already allows the Federal Bureau of Investigation to force U.S. companies to secretly share data and that’s what the big controversy lately… (As of today only Qwest Communications International Inc. has refused to release customer data in the NSA’s bid to create a complete database of all U.S. phone calls without a warrant - one of the few companies concerned about privacy)
Not sure I advocate sabotage (soiling the form with coffee or writing upside down) like some protesters suggest but I sure will think twice about sending this thing online. I’d rather have a Canadian clerk do the work, even if the data still gets in the “monster’s” black box…The Government has already wasted enough of my money on this thing, it doesn’t have to turn into another gun registry. “Minimum co-operation” indeed!
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I agree S11. I was just reading about the NSA domestic call situation where as you mentioned Qwest was the only company to not offer their records without a warrent.
As for the US having a say about what goes on in Canada, it happens at my work too. In one section of the plant workers had to sign to have an investigation done on them. (Where they lived, were born, affiliations etc) Then, the US State Dept. has a say in whether or not these individuals can work on a given project or not. (It could change every time we get a new order) The employee problem that exists is that we have been going through major lay offs. So if you are told that for the next 2 months there is no work for you, the chance of being let go is huge.
The objective of the minimum-cooperations techniques presented in http://www.CountMeOut.ca is ensure that citizens file their census data in a manner that is unreadable by the war-profiteer Lockheed Martin’s optical scanning equipment, but readable in the traditional way by live StatsCan wage-earning data entry clerks.
So at the end of the day, the Census gets its data, but only with increased difficulty. Maybe that will discourage StatsCan from contracting out again to US subsidiaries such as Lockheed Martin
(Canada)
For some parctical (and some off-the-wall) tips on how to slow down the Census, check out http://www.CountMeOut.ca
Don Rogers, Kingston Ont
http://www.CountMeOut.ca