Census 2016

It's pretty important that people take the Census seriously and answer as accurately and honestly as possible.

This is because it is the basis for planning at all levels of government and also for a lot of private organisations trying to assist and support people in our community.

Please don't use it as an opportunity to 'stick it' to the government or be the star at your next BBQ.

This type of democratic information gathering is important stuff.

Funding, staffing levels, priorities and all sorts of things that affect our lives, and those of our loved ones, are guided by the Census results.

The principles behind it, and the process, are amazing.

Let's do it justice.

 

Haha true! You need to be worried about the stuff they're NOT telling you i reckon. Pretty sure i got probed by asio one time or fell on some lego after a big night. Not sure but something went down that night

 

Wylie you can get through on the phone after midnight, I hear.

 

I completely agree, but they've undermined the entire process by taking the choice on anonymity away from the public. Certainly a lot of this information is available via data matching, but this is literally putting it all in one place. To suggest that this data is 'secure' is a joke and there are plenty of organisations that will pay well to access it. After all, the ABS does already make a lot of money selling data from previous census'.

My intention is to log in using a VPN (no need to connect my home address to my IP address, they'll get that from my ISP if they want to work for it) and filling it in honestly - except for my name.

 

The names/addresses will never be released and will be destroyed by 2020 at the latest. The following link explains it:

Privacy, confidentiality & security

The ABS does sell information extracted from the Census, and people often pay for custom reports. However, they cannot purchase your identifying information.

Also, we can all use Census data. If the basic tables don't meet your needs, there is a free Tablebuilder tool on the ABS site that lets you combine datasets in interesting ways.

Yes, you can pay for this type of service, but you don't have to - for a lot of the information.

 

I agree Joynz
But, Peter is also right

Surely between my Tax return, Centrelink, Medicare and school enrolment's they can develop a strategy ???

I feel that a lot more people will "not be entirely honest" purely on the basis that it is now seen "no longer to be anonymous"

I personally feel that GovCo will be DATA MATCHING the cr*p out of it to find some convoluted way to screw an extra dollar out of the public (for yet another Pay Rise/Super Funding/Royal Commission/Junket !!)

 

I filled in the census today, just in case that their server cannot handle the load tomorrow.

I filled in my name and my family members name as is, given I have nothing to hide anyway.

If government wants to catch people, they can just do data matching from across different sources.

 

Same, did mine tonight and answered honestly, my information was out there long before this, I have never hidden my identity online

 

I believe you have until sept 30, if you have the time just keep dialling until you get through

 

I agree, but they can't guarantee that their data security won't ever be breached.

Many years ago I worked for the company that was managing the White and Yellow Pages databases as a software engineer. I had direct access to the code on those databases. Access is fully logged and very restricted.

Despite this, with code level access I could have very easily made a copy of every piece information in those databases. The names, addresses, entire history of every phone line in the country. Including yours, mine, the Prime Ministers, classified military phone lines, restricted addresses, absolutely everything. Imagine what some people would do with that information - criminals, corporations, foreign governments...

...And I could have done it all with complete anonymity. Access to the live databases was heavily logged, but we regularly made copies of portions of the databases for test purposes without any discrimination of the data. How test environments were used was not logged.

I imagine that 20 years later security protocols are far superior but there is no way the ABS can guarantee 100% security of this information. It is vulnerable simply because it exists. A snapshot of Australia is a good and useful thing, but they don't need to put individual names on it.

 

So what if someone finds out that I live in a particular street? They can get that from the phone book!

As to my ethnic background, age, income band etc, well there's nothing really private there either.

Anyone who gets my business card could easily figure out my salary!

It's not like anyone is getting my medical history, or my bank account number, or my actual money...

I'm more worried about my health insurer being hacked. Now that would be a violation of privacy.

 

When it's dark outside, do you close your curtains?
If so, why do you? You have nothing to hide after all.

Placing faith in the ABS to ensure the integrity of the data is an absolutely ridiculous idea.
In fact, I am not the one saying it:

Nocookies

When it gets hacked, this will end in tears. Also, what do we know of the future? Who can say what will happen? Will we find ourselves at war? Tensions are certainly building up in various parts of the globe. How would we feel if this information was hacked by a foreign (enemy) government?

I am not comfortable with the ABS collecting this information and the fact it is nominative is the big issue here. How is it suddenly important for the ABS to have this?

 

Article in The Age/SMH today by Anna Johnston, former deputy privacy commissioner of NSW.
Excerpts below.

Why I won't be filling in the census

Dear Magistrate,

In case the ABS is prosecuting me for non-completion of this year's census, I thought I should explain to you my reasons why I have decided that a boycott is the only moral position I can take.

The short version is this: Yes to a national snapshot. No to detailed data-linking on individuals. That's not what a census is for.

I have wrestled with what my personal position should be. I am normally a fan of the census. It has an important role to play in how we as a people are governed.

.........................................................

Although there are certainly heightened privacy and security risks of accidental loss or malicious misuse with storing names and addresses, the deliberate privacy invasion starts with the use of that data to create a Statistical Linkage Key (SLK) for each individual, to use in linking data from other sources.

Please don't believe that SLKs offer anonymity. SLKs are easy to generate, with the same standard used across multiple datasets. For example, Malcolm Turnbull would be known by the SLK URBAL241019541 in the type of datasets the ABS wants to match Census data against, including mental health services (yes, mental health!) and other health records, disability services records, early childhood records, community services records, as well as data about housing assistance and homelessness.

Anyone with access to these types of health and human services datasets can search for individuals by generating and searching against their SLK. All you need to know is their first and last names, gender and date of birth.

Now tell me that privacy will be absolutely protected if census data is coded and linked using an SLK as well.

Never mind four years; the ABS could destroy all the actual name and address data after only four days or four seconds – but if they have already used it to generate an SLK for each individual census record, the privacy damage has been done.

.........................................................................

I have thought about just refusing to provide my name. But even if I don't give my name, if the ABS is determined to link my census data with other datasets, there would be enough other information in my census answers (sex, age, home address, previous home address, work address) to let them proceed regardless. It won't be enough to protect my privacy.

So until the ABS reverses its decision to match census data about individuals with other datasets about individuals, I am not going to answer the Census questions at all.

I am sorry, Your Worship. I don't like being forced to choose, because I believe Australians deserve to have both good quality statistical data for government decision-making, AND their privacy respected. But on Tuesday night, I will choose privacy.

The census should be a national snapshot, not a tool for detailed data-linking on every individual. Now convict and fine me if you disagree.

Yours sincerely, Anna Johnston

Anna Johnston is the Director of Salinger Privacy, and a former deputy privacy commissioner of NSW.

 

Another article worth a read:

Is the ABS turning Census data into a hacker's honeypot?

 

So what if an enemy country gets access to our addresses? Do they choose which streets to bomb based on the average income levels of different sides of the street or if we live next door to a Buddhist family, I don't think it would make much difference. We gave honest answers when we submitted ours on Sunday. I don't care about data matching any more. Twenty-five years ago I would have been scarred to death of such stuff. But after a while you get used to it. Older age mellows many useless, uncontrollable concerns. I thought "they" had access to all our medical records, ATO and Centrelink files years ago.

 

Every census I ever filled in in Australia (over 4) was never collected and ended up in the bin so I wouldn't put too much faith in the results.

 

The lines are "open" from 7.00am to 10.00pm. I had no luck yesterday and so far no luck today.

Can only assume the letter went out with the junk mail.