Anyone else receive an intrusive questionnaire from the census people?

[comodin]

A few days ago I got a letter from the US Census, telling me to get on line and answer questions. These questions, it said, were necessary in order to plan for social services and demographic changes in various locations, and my response was required by law. This was not the big census, but a yearly one, which only goes out to 2% of addresses. Supposedly, this 2% is randomly selected. My address is evidently one of them.

The questions they ask would be inoffensive if the questionnaire were anonymous, but it starts by requiring your full name and date of birth. With these facts and your address, it may as well be asking for your Social Security number. None of this would be necessary for demographic and statistical purposes. The only reason to collect such personal information about you is to find out all there is to know about you. Knowing your personal identity does not contribute anything to demographic understanding.

After your identity is locked in (the web site won't let you go back to change anything), it asks a number of intrusive questions, such as how many others live in the premises, what their names and birth dates are, what your relationship is with them and theirs with each other, how much money you make, how much everyone else makes, how much your property taxes are, how much you paid in taxes, what was the source of everyone's income, and so forth.

Unless one has lost all sense of the value of privacy, these must strike one as extremely obnoxious questions, once one's identity is known.

Why is this a problem? I remember when the answer would have been so obvious to anyone, that the question would have seemed almost absurd. Not any more! Apparently many people think, "Well, if I'm not doing anything illegal, why should I care if I'm being watched?" They must not have read 1984. I wonder if they'd mind being observed in the bedroom, or in the bathroom, or in having a perfect stranger overhear your most intimate conversations on the phone.

Anyway, if anyone reading this has had a similar letter, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

[Shandi]

Thank you for sharing this. Are you sure it was actually from the US Census? Did you do it? If not, was there a deadline to respond? Was there a consequence listed for not responding? I wonder if this is new, or that I just haven't heard of it. I'm going to post on Nextdoor, not using your name/email, to see if anyone in my neighborhood was contacted. We could post on other sites, to see.