I am in a paperwork week and nearly wrote you an analysis of the Australian Census. Not the use of the census material, but how the form is structured. In vast detail and terrifying depth. By this, you know I am in the middle of a great deal of paperwork. When the end of the paperwork is in sight, then I’ll feel less tendency to analyse data and explain archival methods. I say this very firmly, because I was once that person and haven’t been for a while and while I totally enjoyed that work, everyone around me missed the Middle Ages and bad jokes and passing comments about historical foodstuffs.
Our census is, technically, tomorrow week. This is our first mostly-online one and a vast number of people are not waiting for census night. We’ve been told we don’t have to wait so we race and fill everything in and then walk around with an air of conscious virtue. I sometimes suspect that Australians like filling in forms and being counted. We certainly like our compulsory vote, which is another way of filling in forms and being counted. Politics is so different in countries where voting is optional.
We won’t have decent answers to census questions until June next year. Questions people are asking in my vicinity include how many people will write their religion down as “Jedi” and their second language as “Klingon.” Other folks want to know what answers will be given to the question of gender, which is not a simply binary this time around. We will find out how people describe themselves in gender terms and have a better understanding of how much of Australia sees themselves.
One of the most concerning questions the census folk are asking is how many Jews will feel safe enough this year to write our religion down. The Jewish community was given a special briefing on Sunday evening where we could ask some very senior bods how the data is handled. This is how I know it’s a burning question.
In ten months’ time (if I remember) I will share some answers. Until then, I myself will live in unsatiated curiosity. Australia has changed significantly since the last census. Watch this space?
Census records should be kept in a way that prevents anybody from being identified in any way. That said, I know that such things can be abused and since I do a lot of work on data security for Unbreaking.org, I know that no data is completely safe once collected. Sigh.
Australia does as well at this as is reasonably possible to ask. Things that I like: names are automatically stripped from any capacity to link to data after 12 months (the 12 months are essential for processing… I wish it was just a few weeks), and addresses a few years later ie in the permanent record, after, say, 5 years, there is no capacity to link a person to a given piece of data except by the uniqueness of their answers. For reports where the component is under 10 people (Jews in my little group of suburbs in Canberra, for instance) the number of people is no longer given, so that indovuals cannot be easily identified.
I used to work on this stuff in a human rights/watching capacity, and our practice is as good as it gets. Doesn’t make it safe. But there are barriers to identifying individuals and those barriers discourage all but the most effortful attempts. If things become that bad here, then nothing is safe and we’re better off running away.
I’m participating in a long-running study on cognitive changes in aging at the University of California and when I did some tests last week, the doctor explained to me all the ways that my data was protected. And I laughed and told him that I’ve been writing about data security of late and don’t really believe any data is secure, though I was sure they intended it to be. The only way to protect yourself from the harms that can come from bad people getting hold of your data is not to participate and that’s not really possible in the modern world. And I decided to participate in this study because I think studying cognitive changes is important.
Having an honest census is important, too, so it’s key for governments to do everything possible to protect data (though in the US there are some in our government who want to abuse that trust to either frighten immigrants or ensure that they’re not counted).
To all of this, yes. It’s relative security, not absolute and all we can hope is that it’s strong enough to keep out most bad-intentioned folks. This is why I asked that my data not be maintained, when given the option. I’m not as trusting as I once was.