Ashley Mote deconstructs the UK Census – brilliant and chilling

Ashley Mote deconstructs the UK Census – brilliant and chilling

When the US Census asked me my ethnicity, I answered, American. On reflection, it would have been better not to answer the Census at all.

I’m sure my co-editor agrees with me that Ashley Mote’s deconstruction of the UK Census is brilliant and chilling -

12 March 2011

Problem with the 2011 UK Census?
In view of widespread and understandable concerns about the intrusive nature of the census we in the UK are asked to complete on 27 March, may I offer a few observations and a few relevant facts.

What Does the Law Demand?
Census Act 1920

SCHEDULE
Matters in respect of which particulars may be required
1 Names, sex, age.
2 Occupation, profession, trade or employment.
3 Nationality, birthplace, race, language.
4 Place of abode and character of dwelling.
5 Condition as to marriage, relation to head of family, issue born in marriage.
6 Any other matters with respect to which it is desirable to obtain statistical information with a view to ascertaining the social or civil condition of the population.

How Safe is Our Information?
Unlike in Northern Ireland and Scotland, the absolute confidentiality of personal information is no longer guaranteed by law in England and Wales. This was abolished by Nu-Labour in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, section 39.

Census data collected in England will be treated as ‘restricted’, not ‘confidential’. Our forms will be processed by some 1300 temporary employees at an 800,000 square foot warehouse in Manchester. The Coalition government has provided no convincing assurances about the vetting of these temporary staff, nor the security being imposed on them and the data they handle, neither during nor after the process.

Data gathering in 2011 has been contracted to a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin – the US arms conglomerate. Eighty percent of LM’s work is for the US defence department. It assists more than two dozen American government agencies and is involved in surveillance and data processing for the CIA and FBI. It has provided private-contract interrogators to the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

All US-based companies are subject to the Patriot Act, which allows the US government to have access to any data in the company’s possession. In other words, the US government will have legal access to detailed and highly personal data on the UK’s entire population.

The Census website boldly states, without qualification, that “completing the census online is straightforward, convenient and secure”. Each census form has a 20-digit “personal” internet access code. Describing it as “personal” when it is addressed to “The Occupier”, and accessible to anyone who happens to see the form lying around, is absurdly irresponsible.

How could bureaucrats with a long history of failing to keep data secure contemplate any such thing? If amateur hackers can break into the Pentagon’s computers, there can be no credible guarantee that the British government could guarantee better security – especially given their appalling track-record.

The losses of personal data by the British government and its civil servants have been enormous in recent years. Remember the 400 laptops and memory sticks ‘lost’ by the Ministry of Defence? And that was just one incident.

Worse, there have been no government guarantees that criminals will be prevented from gaining access to raw census data. How can it, when all our personal data will be available to the police, the intelligence agencies, immigration authorities, tax inspectors, DWP investigators, foreign governments, the EU, and to private sector and academic ‘approved researchers’?

The Office for National Statistics’ claim that this data will be safe is worthless. Far too often the UK government has failed to secure and protect personal records in digital format. We have no credible reason to believe them this time.

Intrusive Role of the European Union
In 2008 the European Parliament approved a Census Regulation requiring the harmonization of outputs from member states’ censuses of population and housing. It is now law in the UK. The regulation requires that information collected in the UK is passed to Eurostat, the EU’s statistics institution, which was totally discredited for fraud and corruption amongst its own senior staff in a major scandal over many years.

. . .Statewatch, the civil liberties body that monitors the EU, has discovered that Brussels wants law enforcement agencies in member countries to build lists of political activists as part of a ‘systematic data collection’.

Civil servants in the member countries charged with this duty have been told to collate information on what the EU chooses to call ‘agents of radicalisation’. They have been sent a list of 70 questions to answer about each ‘suspect’. They want to know about family members, psychological traits, religious affiliation, activities, economic status and, significantly, ‘oral comments’ – presumably via phone taps – on political issues. The extent of this EU trawl for potential political opponents was confirmed in The Guardian on 8th June 2010.

No doubt the 2011 census will provide a good starting point.

Invasive Questions and Wrong Assumptions
Who is expected to respond? The census is addressed to “the occupier” – singular. Yet there is space for answers relating to six people, and visitors. The preamble makes it plain that “the occupier” is legally liable for the accuracy of answers relating to all the others.

The government ‘justifies’ the need for the census by claiming that, amongst other things, it is required to plan the provision of education, health, transport, policing, housing and so on. Apparently we are expected to believe that these services are today being managed on the basis of the census taken ten years ago. It’s demonstrably ridiculous.

Such services are demand led, and rightly so. The use of census statistics to plan and deliver them is at best highly marginal and rapidly out of date.

Unlike previous censuses, people are expected to state their employer’s name, their main activity, their address, and the full postal address of the location where that individual works. This applies to everyone, whether they work for Tesco or the intelligence services. Even people who are supposedly in a witness protection scheme after giving evidence at a criminal trial must provide this information.

The first question on employment provides nowhere for a retired person to state that fact. The assumption is that he or she should have been looking for work in the previous week, if not actually working. The chance to declare that they are retired comes later. Volunteers who work for nothing have nowhere to say so.

There are far more intrusive questions on ethnic origins than 10 years ago, unsurprising after the torrent of foreign nationals allowed to live here over the last decade. Answers are mandatory. Questions on religion are not. However, despite there being over 390,000 self-declared Jedi recorded in the 2001 census (more than there were Sikhs or Jews) there is no tick box for Jedi.

Even the reasonable voice of Charles Moore, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, complains (12 March) that the intrusive questions on ethnicity will be used by government and others to exploit the race and culture wars which bedevil us. They reinforce divisions.

So, I might add, does the expensive provision of census forms in over 50 other languages. How better to reinforce the divisions in today’s fractured British society? Those of us meeting the cost of such indulgence might reasonably ask foreigners who have chosen to live in the UK to adopt our language, culture and way of life, at least outwardly.

Legal and Constitutional Protection
In 2001 over 1.5 million households failed to complete the census, but only 38 were prosecuted. But that was 10 years ago.

The Human Rights Act and the Data Protection Act provide us with protection against an overbearing state. Well, that’s the theory anyway.

Several other aspects British and international law are also relevant.

Both Magna Carta, 1215, and the Declaration of Rights, 1688, were contracts made directly between the Crown and the people. Both were and still are beyond the powers of parliament. Any repeal of statutes leaves the original contracts untouched. (References: Speaker Betty Boothroyd, Hansard 21 July 1993, and a letter from the House of Lords Archives Office to me in September 2000.)

Magna Carta recognises the rights of subjects of the Crown to hold government to account. This is sometimes described as the right to ‘lawful rebellion’, and was specifically confirmed in the oath sworn by Henry III at his coronation on 28 October 1216.

The Bill of Rights went further. It explicitly forbids the recognition of power over what is now the UK by any “foreign person, prelate, state or potentate”. In other words our joining what was then the Common Market was unlawful, and our membership of the EU remains unlawful. Most certainly passing information to Brussels to assist their governance of the UK is illegal.

Our constitution is fragmented but clear. It provides that the state answers to the people. We, the people, do not answer to the state. There is no such legal entity as a British state.

We are a sovereign people and we elect individuals for a maximum of five years to look after our best interests. And any future parliament has an absolute right to repeal any Acts passed by previous governments. Thus, they answer to us.

Several clauses in the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights defend our right to privacy.

3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

So Where Does That Leave Us?
A census is only possible with the general consent of the population. In some countries this no longer exists. Germany has not taken a full census since that planned for 1983 was postponed until 1987. The Netherlands has not had a census since 1971, following a high level of refusal previously. Both these countries, and Denmark, now use alternative data sources based mostly on housing registers and sample surveys.

The UK government has made no secret of its irritation at having to carry out the 2011 census, which was put in train by Nu-Labour before the election last year. It will cost almost half a billion pounds.

The Coalition has initiated work on data-collection alternatives, so that the 2011 census proves to be the last of its kind.

Meanwhile, what to do?
All the basic information about each of us is in the public domain already. That is – name, address, age, sex and marital status.

If you plan to complete it at all, you might consider. . .

(a) providing the legally specific information required only, and
(b) posting it.

The Royal Mail admits to several million letters a year not reaching their intended destination.

Think on. . .

Thank you, Mr Mote.

http://www.britsattheirbest.com/archives/003940.php

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£250 million army of census snoopers set to hit the streets

With Census Day taking place on Sunday, the Office for National Statistics is preparing to send out 35,000 ‘field staff’ to force people to fill their 2011 census in, at a cost of £250million - half the entire budget of £500million. After the shambles of 2001, when over three million people did not fill in their forms, the ONS is keen to get a more complete set of results at any cost. The ONS explained their role yesterday: '"Their objective will be to obtain a return from each of these households, either by helping them complete the questionnaire (explaining the...

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Concerns over census confidentiality gather pace

On the cover of the 2011 Census form, the Office of National Statistics claims: “Your personal information is protected by law. Census information is kept confidential for 100 years” However, an expert on privacy has discovered that there are a number of circumstances where the data can be disclosed. Chris Pounder from Amberhawk, a privacy training provider, points to section 39(4) of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. This states that the ONS can disclose confidential data if the disclosure is: "made for the purposes of a criminal investigation"; "made in pursuance of an order of a court"; or...

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Census Wench visits.

Blogging will be intermittent for a while. The snow/hail/rain miscellany of the past few days has driven me indoors from the garden so I'm engaged in serious spring cleaning. When it's over I'll have the cleanest springs in the land.

There are also two writing deadlines as well as the zombie book and the dystopia (which is scary to write - every time I think of a new oppression, the Coagulation implement something worse) and there is an endowment policy to deal with.

When I was twenty-two I was homeless. By the time I was twenty-five I had a mortgage on a pokey, tatty little flat in the shitty end of town, above a drug addict and below a Goth infestation, and it was an endowment mortgage. It wasn't my best business decision although it was far from my worst, because I did manage to eventually sell it for enough to cover the remaining mortgage, so I didn't land myself in debt again.

The endowment I kept on, even though I rented for years after leaving the flat. When I bought this house I thought 'Great, in 2011 I can knock £20,000 off the mortgage which will bring down the monthly cost nicely.'

That time has come, and with it has arrived pages of forms full of questions that make as much sense as 'Are you now, have you ever been, or does your father in his spare time?' I also have to prove who I am by sending photo ID. For twenty-five years these buggers have taken money every single month from my bank account and never once asked for any proof of who I am. Now it's time for cash to flow the other way and it's all 'Oh? Do we know you?' Yes. I'm the mug who's given you money every month for twenty-five years on the promise of £20K which you now inform me will be 18.5K.

They suggest a financial adviser. I think I need a translator. I need to phone for clarification but I have not yet worked out what to ask!

It won't pay the full amount promised but it doesn't matter. It will still knock a third off my remaining mortgage. This is my only debt and the sooner it's gone the happier I will be. If only I can work out what the hell this form is asking for.

To add to the form woes, today a wench called with an envelope. 'This is your census', she said.

'I didn't order a census,' I said. 'What does it do?'

'You don't order it. The government sends it to you and you fill it in.'

'What does it cost?'

'It doesn't cost anything,' she stated with an evident total lack of understanding of the nature of government. Everything they do costs us all something. We are even paying for her to go around telling us it's all free.

'Well, it's very nice but I really don't have time for questionnaires. Can you come back next week? When I'm not home?'

These census people don't like to engage in banter. 'If you don't fill it in you'll be fined.'

'I see.' I accepted the package, addressed to someone called Mr. Occupier. He's had letters delivered here before, usually from politicians around voting time and from other lying advertisers. He never turns up to collect them.

She had a clipboard. They always do, don't they? I'm going to have to get one. People answer anything if you have a clipboard.

'How many people live here?' There seemed no end to her questioning.

'How many can you see?'

'Well, just you, but there might be more inside.'

'Not when I last looked, although there's this Mr. Occupier who gets his mail sent here. I've never seen him.' I think I detected a little steam from her ears.

'So you live here alone?'

'Yes.' Perhaps I shouldn't have waggled my eyebrows and leered. It was a risk, she was no looker. Not much of a thinker either, judging by her next question.

'Is this house detached or semi-detached?'

There was a pause while I considered whether to push this further, but then the little red man on my left shoulder stuck his pitchfork in my ear.

'Neither,' I said. 'It is entirely attached to the house next door.'

She didn't just close her eyes, she sucked them right back into her skull. Her lips puckered to the point where I swear you could not have put a titanium drill through there. One more pucker and her head would have imploded. Then she marked 'semi-detached' on her clipboard. She could have done that from halfway up the street. Houses are, on a human scale, quite large and visible from a distance, as are the gaps - where they exist - between them. I pictured her asking every occupier of a terrace if they lived in a terrace, and what floor each flat was on. How can anyone resist tormenting the stupid? It's so much fun.

Her eyes reappeared, having evidently failed in their search for a brain because they were still blank. Her lips unclenched just enough to force words through. 'Right. Do you need someone to help you fill this in?'

'Not directly. I plan to fill it in using blood, but not mine. Do you have a list of blood donors?'

Have you ever seen a face attempt to blanch and turn red with rage at the same time? It's better than TV. Eventually she managed to shake her head until something connected in there.

'You can just use a pen like everyone else, you know.'

'That would cost me something. You said it was free. Still, not to worry. I have bottles of blood in the fridge. I use them in my work.'

I do, really. Horse and sheep blood are components of many bacterial growth media and if you really want to get all witchcrafty, try brain heart infusion medium with 5% added horse blood. It really does contain what it says it contains. There is nothing vegan about bacteria. I have had tremendous fun explaining to students that they also have to have a circle of salt while preparing the media and that they must do it at specific phases of the moon. If you have a microbiologist working for you who insists on coming to work at midnight to prepare media - sorry, it was probably my fault.

The blood is in the fridge in the lab, not the house, but I neglected to mention this and the big grin was perhaps mistimed, because she left at that point in something of a hurry.

I haven't yet taken the form out of the envelope. I have important things to do first. Filling it in with horse blood using a quill made from a discarded seagull feather would cost me around £20 but you know, it would be worth it. Especially if she made a special note to look out for the nut at a particular house. It would be hilarious to hear they'd tried to DNA-analyse that blood to find out whose I'd used, because I know they would start with the premise that it was human blood and never consider that it might not be. If they found a match I'd laugh until my hair fell out.

Especially if it matched Census Wench.

She also said something about filling the form in online and there's apparently a code that's personal to me inside the envelope. But the envelope isn't addressed to me. It's addressed to Mr. Occupier so it's his code, not mine. I won't do it online. I can't do it in blood online.

If you don't have access to lab supplies, liver is cheap and comes with a lot of blood. I had liver and onions this week, £1 per half-kilo and it's great stuff. Pure meat, no bones, no fat (it was lambs' liver and they hadn't developed a serious drinking habit yet) and full of concentrated meaty goodness for pennies per meal. Lambs' hearts are also on sale but they are seriously filling and are in packs of three. I couldn't use them all before they went off. Besides, they are a Valentine's day meal really. Funny, girlfriends never seem to answer calls on February 15th. It's a mystery.

I have to wonder why they are in packs of three. Lambs don't tend to have three and if you're cooking a Valentine's meal for three - damn, I'm impressed!

Anyhow, have to get up in the morning. Someone is helping turn my wasteland of a garage into an actual useful workroom. It's going to be messy, in fact it already is because the house is burdened by the piles of crap that were in there until recently. Car? You couldn't get a pushbike in there. Fortunately I have neither.

So if I miss a day, it's because I can't get at the computer through the mounds of stuff I didn't know I had and don't know why I own.

The Day of the Hired Skip is approaching, I can feel it...

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I Turned Away the Census, and am Prepared to Face Prison rather than take part in this Invasive and Criminal Census.

By Dave Derby

Saturday morning I open my front door to a little old lady offering me the Irish  Census issued by US Intelligence gathering company CACI, who have been accused of providing staff to inflict torture and rape on innocent Iraqi civilians in Abu Ghraib interrogation camp just outside of Bagdhad.

I promptly told her I do not want to take part in any census. She then told me it was Compulsory at which point I replied that it was not compulsory for me!  She then left my doorstep to continue distributing these invasive forms to the rest of my neighbourhood.

I expect to receive the same form (more like a book!) through the post and will return it unopened with the words “No Contract Due to Security Issues, Return to Sender” -  written in black marker across the front and back of the envelope.

I know they will not give up that easily and I am prepared to fight in court if I have to. I will not be terrorised into giving this personal information to them despite their preemptive threat of a 25 thousand EURO fine!

I would strongly recommend that we all make the point of refusing to fill in this form – point blank.  I know I am putting my neck on the line by saying this but I can honestly say that I would rather die than take part in this census just as I would rather face death than accept the RFID Chip.

Don’t just fill it up because they are striking terror into you by threatening you with a huge fine.  It has come to the point where we really need to stand up for what is right – and be strong – because there is worse to come, I gaurantee that. And to aid and abet torture and rape by conforming to a private company who willingly engage in these acts – for profit – would be morally wrong and very weak. I’m sorry, this is just how I and many, many others feel about this

[more...]

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Census 2011: Where do you work?

As you might have heard, the first batch of 2011 census forms have today begun dropping onto the doormats of millions of homes across the UK. At Big Brother Watch, we have a clear position on the census: we believe it is both highly intrusive and a monumental waste of time and money. While the fact the public will be questioned on the type of central heating they have and the religion they practice has been widely publicised, the questions relating to an individual's workplace have received far less airtime. According to a BBW supporter in Herefordshire, the Office of...

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