Actors, lawmakers and former Census Bureau directors want to make sure the 2020 census is confidential. They’re forming an outside watchdog coalition to monitor any problem.
In this Tuesday, March 24, 2020 photo, forms from the U.S. Census Bureau arrive at a home in Orlando, Fla. The coronavirus has waylaid efforts to get as many people as possible to take part in the census.
The goals of the coalition of 275 groups and individuals are to monitor and stop any breaches of confidentiality in the data from the 2020 census. Federal law has strong protections against the release of any personal information from the census, but with distrust of the federal government growing over the years, an outside coalition is needed to reassure the public any problems are being monitored, organizers said.
“I don’t anticipate a breach but really the pledge is an effort to reassure the general public who doesn’t have an awareness about how strong census privacy laws are,” said Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “There’s nothing wrong with having a watchdog on the outside.
The Pew Research Center conducted two surveys, one in early January and another in late February and early March. In between the two surveys, the U.S. Census Bureau launched a $500 million outreach campaign to convince U.S. residents to participate in the head count, and about half of the money was devoted to a media campaign that will pay for more than 1,000 ads.
The head count started in late January in rural, native villages in Alaska, but the rest of the country wasn’t able to start answering the questionnaire until the second week of March. The coronavirus crisis pushed back the deadline for finishing the 2020 census from late-July to mid-August and forced the suspension of field operations for a month from mid-March to mid-April.
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