Quote:
Originally Posted by Stockerzzz
|
It definitely could. If it does, I expect lawsuits by the States. Ultimately, census counting is a Constitutional mandate, and the privacy rules are only statutory. Depending on the Supreme Court, the privacy laws could be struck down or ordered to be modified. The political makeup of the Court doesn't even make predicting what a decision looks like very easy, as arguments could be made from many different perspectives.
The most worrisome aspect is that non-Federal governments won't even get access to real numbers as it currently stands. Ultimately, though, while the census makes certain data mining operations easier, it's not required to do what they describe. I'd be surprised if the Government could prove that the Census actually greatly reduced privacy compared to what is already available. Ultimately, if the cat's already out of the bag, it's hard to argue that the negatives of distortion are outweighed by theoretical privacy concerns that have already been lost. Which means the real data may be delayed, but it seems unlikely to be kept for the full 72 years.