Census privacy fears lead to boycott call
Sunday 20 February 2011
Printable
EmailCampaigners called on the public today to boycott next month's census due to the invasive nature of the questions - and because it's being run by a US arms giant.
Pro-privacy campaign group No2ID described the 2011 census as pointless, "personally invasive" and a "bureaucratic assault on the privacy of families."
Anti-war campaigners have also urged a boycott of the census due to the involvement of US weapons firm Lockheed Martin.
Among the questions on the 2011 survey will be demands for the personal details of individuals who visit your home.
No2ID said the census exemplified the "official obsession with documenting our private lives."
Its general secretary Guy Herbert said: "This census is an astonishing bureaucratic assault on every family's privacy.
"The stalker state wants to know who you are, what you do and now who you do it with - information the government does not need to get statistics for planning.
"It is private information that the government cannot protect and should not collect."
No2ID has also claimed that "stealthy changes" have been made to the confidentiality of the data accrued.
The Office of National Statistics (ONS), which carries out the census, disputed this and said that such questions had always been part of the survey.
Anti-war campaigners also expressed concern about where the information could end up.
Lockheed Martin's involvement in collecting data has led to fears that data on British citizens could be passed to the US.
The vast majority of the firm's activity - an estimated 80 per cent - is with the US Defence Department.
It is also involved in information-gathering for the CIA and has provided interrogators to the notorious US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq as well as Guantanamo Bay.
The firm, which won a £150 million contract to run the census, also manufactures the Trident missile system, cluster munitions and F-16 fighter jets.
Under the US Patriot Act the US government can access any data in the firm's possession.
A Stop the War Coalition spokesman said: "We will certainly be calling for a boycott and telling people not to co-operate with the warmongers."
But a spokesman for the ONS said a "number of safeguards" had been put in place to prevent the US gaining access to data.
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