Bill Morem has an opinion piece about the detailed U.S. census survey that gives the issue a “human face:”
Tom Bolton is in a pickle, a dilemma that may leave his wages garnished by the government to the tune of $5,000. He’s staring down the barrel of such a fine because the Atascadero resident is refusing to give the U.S. Census Bureau about 28 pages of details of his private life.
Read more in the San Luis Obispo Tribune.
Morem doesn’t argue that the survey is illegal, but he does suggest that the rich may have greater privacy because they can afford to just write a check to the government for failure to fill it out. I hadn’t quite thought of the inequity that way before, but he does have a point: those who can afford to pay the fine can have greater privacy than those who can’t.