Thoughts Aloud

Here is an interesting item that I find amazing hasn’t been in the news. I just received a phone call from my upset sister in North Carolina, asking me if I knew anything about the Census bureau gathering the GPS coordinates of everyone’s front door. She had just had an altercation with a purported Census worker at her front door keying her address into a GPS device. She thought it was some sort of scam and tried to take the person’s picture; but was told she was not permitted to do so. Then to her amazement, the Sheriff was called on her for interfering with a Census worker!

My sister is very aware of what is going on, reads the newspapers, watches cable news, listens to talk radio, etc.; and she just couldn’t believe this was for real, because she had heard nothing about any such survey. I had seen a report on a Patriot forum of a similar encounter in another State about ten days ago, so I Googled “GPS Census.” The only thing close to a MSM news report was something from NPR, which I didn’t bother to check out. The most prominent entry was a piece yesterday on “American Daily Review” entitled, “Big Brother GPS Doorway Census” by Douglas V. Gibbs:

The Decennial Census in 2010 is around the corner, and technology promises to be of great assistance to the process of counting the number of Americans residing in this great nation. Instead of using paper-based lists, surveys, and the like, however, the United States Government has developed a paperless method to achieve their census goals. Efficiency and accuracy are the promised bi-products of these new technology-based programs, which includes creating Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates for the front doors of American homes. This way, in addition to the current satellite location and picture of your property from the roof, the government will now have a GPS coordinate for your front door.

GPS coordinates of your front door will make it easier for the government to monitor you. The U.S. Census Bureau is simply an excuse – a harmless looking means of obtaining the front door coordinates. The creation of GPS coordinates for front doors has nothing to do with the Census, in all honesty, no matter how much the United States Government tries to convince you that it does.

Why would the U.S. government desire the exact location of your front door to be entered into their GPS data base when they already have the location of your home in the system?

Read the rest of it for his speculation and several references for his piece. Going to the belly of the beast, the Census Bureau’s PIO back on 3/25/09 released, “Census Workers to Verify Addresses in the U.S. – First Major 2010 Census Operation to Employ 140,000.” Here it is in its entirety:

The Census Bureau will launch a massive operation on March 30 to verify and update more than 145 million addresses as it prepares to conduct the 2010 Census.

Nationwide, more than 140,000 census workers will participate in the address canvassing operation, a critically important first step in assuring that every housing unit receives a census questionnaire in March 2010. All information is kept confidential. The countdown to the 2010 Census is officially one year out on April 1.

“A complete and accurate address list is the cornerstone of a successful census,” said Tom Mesenbourg, acting director of the U.S. Census Bureau. “Building on the achievements of the 2000 Census, we have been testing and preparing for the 2010 count all decade, and we’re ready to fulfill our constitutional mandate to count everyone living in the United States.”

The first publicly visible activity of the 2010 Census is ahead of schedule. Address canvassing kicks off a week earlier than originally planned and should conclude by mid-July. The operation will use new hand-held computers equipped with GPS to increase geographic accuracy. The ability to capture GPS coordinates for most of the nation’s housing units will greatly reduce the number of geographic coding errors caused by using paper maps in previous counts.

“The primary goal of the census is to count everyone once, only once, and in the right place,” Mesenbourg said. “Because the census is used for reapportioning seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and the distribution of more than $300 billion in federal dollars every year to state and local governments, it’s essential to get this first step right.”

Over the last several years, the Census Bureau has been actively working on updating its geographic databases and master address files. From implementing the Local Update of Census Address program where more than 11,500 tribal, state and local governments participated in a review of the Census Bureau’s address list for their area, to increasing the precision of the GPS mapping, many advances have been made to compile the most comprehensive listing of addresses in the nation.

The address canvassing operation will be conducted out of 151 local census offices across the U.S, with most offices beginning on April 6. In most cases, census workers will knock on doors to verify addresses and inquire about additional living quarters on the premises. This is the first census to include group quarters (such as dormitories, group homes, prisons and homeless shelters) in the address canvassing operation, which should improve both the accuracy and coverage of the final count.

There will be one final opportunity to add new home construction in early 2010 prior to the mailing of the census questionnaires.

Census workers can be identified by the official Census Bureau badge they carry. During the address canvassing operation, census workers may ask to verify a housing structure’s address and whether there are additional living quarters on the property.

2010 Census workers will never ask for bank or social security information. All census information collected, including addresses, are confidential and protected by law. By law, the Census Bureau cannot share respondents’ answers with the FBI, the IRS, CIA, Welfare, Immigration, or any other government agency. No court of law or law enforcement agency can find out respondents’ answers. All Census Bureau employees — including temporary employees — take an oath for life to keep census information confidential. Any violation of that oath is punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and five years in prison.

Somehow, that last paragraph isn’t all that reassuring. I suspect the intrusive questions they will ask next year are insignificant compared to the data they are collecting right now. The very fact that there is a deafening silence from the news media over what is going on is ominous. My sister can’t be the only Patriot who has had a confrontation with them over this (although she did make her big brother proud).

Why aren’t there news stories about them? One would think that it would be in the best interest of the Census bureau itself to make sure people aren’t freaked out by these “legal” trespassers, just to protect their own employees from the risks of being mistaken for some scam artist, as my sister suspected. Do read Gibbs’ speculation, and I am sure you can think of a couple of concerns of your own. Big Brother indeed… â—„Daveâ–º

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