The intrusive exercise we call the Census
Think the Census is a beneficial exercise in data collection? Think again, says a sceptical Julian Lee.
The first-ever comprehensive census in Europe was issued by a feudal warlord who was trying to figure out how much wealth he could extract from his newly conquered land.
William the Bastard, now known as the Conqueror, conquered England in 1066. Twenty years later he set about implementing what became known as the ‘‘Domesday Book’’. His purpose is clearly explained in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles: ‘‘Then sent he his men over all England into each shire; commissioning them to find out . . . what dues he ought to have by the year from the shire. What, or how much, each man had, who was an occupier of land in England, either in land or in stock, and how much money it were worth.
‘‘There was not one single hide, nor a yard of land, nay, moreover (it is shameful to tell, though he thought it no shame to do it), not even an ox, nor a cow, nor a swine was there left, that was not set down in his writ.’’
It was all about a government trying to – in the words of the Chronicle – ‘‘shamelessly’’ extract as much wealth from the population as possible. Nothing has changed. Statistics New Zealand assures the population that the information you provide in this year’s Census is for your benefit – it will help improve medical services, where to place schools, where to build roads.
There is no doubt this is the case. But to think of the state as a kindly parental figure just trying to do what’s best for us is a delusion bordering on Soviet proportions.
What Statistics New Zealand doesn’t explicitly state in the press releases is that the Census will benefit the IRD as well as politicians and bureaucrats constantly scanning the population for sources of income that is not theirs.
The state thinks first and foremost about the preservation of the state – the population most certainly comes second. The state takes part of our wealth, gives us crumbs in return and expects an oath of fealty.
Between us giving our hardearned money to the state and it being returned to us in the form of services, untold millions have been siphoned off due to waste, inefficiency and greed.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles don’t say what William the Conqueror’s PR department told the conquered inhabitants of Britain to justify snooping around their villages and in their pig-stys. Perhaps the threat of medieval steel was sufficient.
Or perhaps the Conqueror’s PR department told the Anglo-Saxon population, which greatly outnumbered the conqueror’s small Norman army, that it was for their own good.
Perhaps you subscribe to the bizarre theory that the state has the right to force us to give it our own personal information under threat of financial punishment. Perhaps you believe that the Census is for the common good.
Then why should we have to submit our own names? Why can’t we just fill in the information without linking it to ourselves?
After all, according to Statistics New Zealand, any of the information gathered by the Census for research is ‘‘always about analysis of groups, not individuals and aims to solve issues that benefit New Zealand.’’ And ‘‘we remove personal identifying information such as names, addresses and dates of birth.’’
So why gather them in the first place?
According to Statistics: ‘‘We use name to match the individual form you complete to the people listed on your dwelling form and to help us determine family and household structure,’’ as well as linking data to the NZ Integrated Infrastructure research database.
I’m not convinced that’s strong enough of a reason.
I too would like to believe the Census is a feel good exercise for the betterment of New Zealand. But even if I decided to submit myself to that belief, it would still be impossible to overcome the concern that our precious personal data is insecure in an age where even the world’s biggest companies struggle to contain increasing cyber insecurity.
In 2016 the Australian Census suffered from what was believed to be a Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS) where a website is flooded with fake users to override it.
During the attack millions of Australians were denied service to the Census website and it shut down for 40 hours. Despite extensive media coverage and governmental inquiries no one knows who or how or why, or if it was a data raid.
Forget that data in New Zealand is already in a tenuous state and completely vulnerable to a concerted effort by a determined person. What about the businesses that said last year that the Government’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) is relatively powerless to deal with cyberattacks? Or journalist able to hack into thousands of Work and Income New Zealand files. Or when Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully’s emails were hacked?
What about the volume of cyber attacks on government departments that don’t make it to the media, because you don’t have to report data breaches in New Zealand?
And if the increasing vulnerability of the New Zealand cyber space is of no concern to you, there are other factors – many government agencies already collect data so it’s effectively doubling up, companies charge others to release data but we’re forced to give it away for free, we have no control over who government staff voluntarily release our personal information to, etc.
But if you’re a fan of the outmoded, antiquated, heaving mass that is the twenty-first century nation-state that punishes people for not filling out a form to enable it to better exploit the wealth of the people to sustain itself, then the Census is a great way to show your support.
What Statistics New Zealand doesn’t explicitly state in the press releases is that the Census will benefit the IRD as well as politicians and bureaucrats constantly scanning the population for sources of income that is not theirs.