alt Hacker NewsI "enumerated" for the last census. Trust in my community was already not high* and I had lots of interesting encounters. I really believed the rather invasive data I was collecting with a friendly face would be used and handled responsibly. I feel for the poor souls that'll sign up to go door to door for 2030 now that the firewalls against weaponizing and monetizing all of our sensitive government data has been torn down, and even more for those that will volunteer information that can hurt them.
The comments that this rather expensive endeavour should just be about getting a head count are also amusing to me. The data collected was such an important baseline of common understanding, and this will not be a good thing for its future quality. I've grown very jaded now seeing all the things taken for granted in this country and lost or degraded recently with a whimper.
*: To be fair, they sent me specifically to places that didn't respond, so I was naturally led to believe that everyone in my region hated the government, ignored bizzarrely threatening fliers, or had recently moved and had no knowledge of the inhabitants (if any) during the census period.
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I did similar and you summarized the feelings well. It's really sad and hard to rebuild that trust
And disheartening that people continue to gravitate to a political party that proudly announces desires to abuse this data.
The real decline started after Edward Snowden and all the information that came out about the NSA. It really sparked distrust in the government. Trying to get people to respond to surveys was already hard, why would those general people believe the Census Bureau is actually keeping their data safe? Doesn’t matter when it comes to laws and the constitution, if you work for an Agency. You are the government. Response rates keep going down, now we have attacks from the President on statistics about the economy. I’m a little cynical and I just assume they will continue to shrink the statistical agencies and make the statistics more useless (which is what this recent policy change does), and they will shift to the private industry. Even though the private industry cannot do the work in the Field that the government does.
> The comments that this rather expensive endeavour should just be about getting a head count are also amusing to me
Countries conduct censuses so they can understand, in great detail, what is going on with the people who make up the country.
With this accurate information, improvement plans can be made, and life can be improved for everyone.
The comments about just making it a head count give a very interesting window into the mentality of many these days. They don’t want to - it can’t fathom how to - make life better.
It’s sad, really
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> The comments that this rather expensive endeavour should just be about getting a head count are also amusing to me. The data collected was such an important baseline of common understanding, and this will not be a good thing for its future quality.
Even without considering the Census data products alone, Census demographic data underlies virtually all extrapolation from other survey research. Everything from national opinion surveys based on tens of thousands of respondents, to small community surveys. A Census product with the most diverse participation pays off almost infinitely for America. It benefits everyone from national newspapers to rural counties.
If the smallest communities lose what little trust remains in the privacy of the Census, they have the most to lose in all of these ways.