Privacy Issues

What happens
to my census info?

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The numbers the Census Bureau publishes are combined with thousands of answers from people in your neighborhood and across the country. No one, except sworn Census Bureau employees, can see your questionnaire or link your name with your responses. In fact, the law provides severe penalties for any census employee that makes your answers known. They know that if they give out any information they see on a form, they can face a $5,000 fine and a five-year prison term. Census workers must pass security and employment and reference checks. Census workers are sworn to secrecy. They cannot currently work as tax collectors, assessors or law enforcement officials. Protecting the privacy of people who reply to the census is an important part of every census taker's training.

By law, the Census Bureau cannot share your answers with the IRS, FBI, Welfare, Immigration, or any other government agency. No court of law, not even the President of the United States, can find out your answers. The same law that keeps your answers out of the hands of these agencies, prevents the Census Bureau from selling or giving away your address to people who want to send you mail.

More recent censuses have gathered much more information than the earlier ones, including information about educational level, financial status, property ownership, buying habits, religious and political beliefs, etc. For this reason, privacy laws prohibit the release of the full data collected in the census until 72 years after the census date. Until then, the data is tabulated and presented for public use (in books called Statistical Abstract of the United States) without specific names of individuals, so it is still very useful for general demographic, sociological, and business research.

(The 1930 census will be released in the year 2002.)