Recently in Census Sunday March 27th 2011 Category

The propaganda from the Office for National Statistics claims, falsely, that you must fill in your Census Form, so that the Government can "plan" the doling out of taxpayers' money for new hospitals or schools etc. The last 2001 Census and the mismanagement of public finances thereafter by the then Labour government, proves that this is claim is simply untrue.

However, in a time of budget cuts, due to the financial disaster caused by Gordon Brown and his Labour party colleagues, it is more likely that Census Information will be used to "justify" cuts in in budgets and services by the current Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition government.

Anybody who believes that, for example, answering Question 13 "How is your health in general", will somehow magically lead to an increase in funding for their local National Health Service is utterly wrong.

It is was technically illegal to complete your Census Form and send it by post or via the internet, before Sunday 27th March 2011, despite the Office for National Statistics propaganda.

This year's Census, unlike previous ones, no longer has absolute legal protection from the demands by other Government departments and agencies (including foreign government agencies) for the Sensitive personal Data which the Census Form requires.

See previous Spy Blog articles e.g. Indy Letters page - Glen Watson confirms lack of Census 2011 confidentiality legal powers

It is not that the Office for National Statistics will willingly compromise your individual privacy and security, they no longer have any legal powers to prevent individual or mass database trawling and copying by other Government agencies.

It is actually the British government which is more of a threat to your personal privacy and security, than the involvement of Lockheed Martin, the US defense contractor, a division of which is the prime contractor in this year's Census (they also did the 2001 Census).

Why make it easier for them to put your privacy and security at risk ?

Here are some suggestions for civil disobedience or just traditional British bloody mindedness when faced by bureaucratic red tape, or for pranksterish lulz, short of an outright refusal to comply with filling in the Census Form and returning it, under the threat of a criminal record and a fine of up to £1000.

Whether the extra manual work which these suggestions may cause has already been budgeted for, or whether it will marginally decrease the profits of Lockheed Martin, remains to be seen:

Census Form suggestions:

1. "Accidentally" cut off the individual page tracking barcodes
2. Do not use blue or black ink
3. Use joined up writing
4. Use "The Occupier" or other pseudonyms
5. SQL Injection statements
6. Return the Census Form in a non-windowed envelope
7. Send some or all of your junk mail to ONS via FREEPOST
8. Individual Census Forms
9. Terrorism Act 2000 section 58A Eliciting, publishing or communicating information about members of armed forces etc
10. Partial Post Codes
11. Data Protection Act 1998 section 10 Right to prevent processing likely to cause damage or distress.
12. Tick all of the checkboxes
13. Do Not Sign the Census Form
14. Assert your own Copyright - All Rights Reserved, to your own Personal Information
15. Return the Form as Late As Possible
16. Do not cooperate with "non-compliance" spies
17. Complete both a paper and a slightly different online web Census Form

Please feed back any further suggestions, either here in the (anonymous) blog Comments or via email to blog@spy.org.uk (PGP encryption key available)

If enough people can cast doubt on the statistical validity of the Census, because of civil disobedience caused by its intrusive, security risking questions and the lack of legal assurance of absolute confidentiality from other government departmental snooping and data trawling, then perhaps then next Census will be radically shorter, simpler and less expensive.

The Online Census website is now online via

http://www.census.gov.uk/

When you get your Census Form, it will have an Internet Access Code which will authorise your access to the system and which will be used in the Questionnaire Tracking Database to see if you have completed the Census Form or not.

To be fair to the ONS, they do appear to have at least set up reasonably secure SSL / TLS encrypted web forms. Which do seem to have "A rated" Digital Certificates and webserver configurations. These are not the best in the world, but comparable with most online banking systems.

Compare the results you get via the SSL Labs testing page:

These Online Census Form webservers get an [A 88] rating :

https://onlinema1.census.gov.uk [195.59.102.163]
https://onlinema2.census.gov.uk [195.59.102.171]
https://onlinepb1.census.gov.uk [212.137.40.242]
https://onlinepb2.census.gov.uk [212.137.40.250]
.
However the Census Media Centre extranet web page
https://2011mc.census.gov.uk [94.126.106.133]

only gets a [B 76] rating, because it still allows weak 56 bit single DES encryption as a choice of cipher.

More importantly all of these Census webservers are still vulnerable to Man in the Middle Attacks because they still support unpatched SSL Renegotiation

http://blog.ivanristic.com/2009/11/not-just-csrf-ssl-authentication-gap-used-for-credentials-theft.html

Therefore nobody should use a public WiFi Access Point e.g. in a cyber café etc to fill in their Online Census Form, especially if they do not fill in all of the form in one session, and leave it partially completed online to come back to later.

There does seem to be a minor spelling mistake: "Forth" instead of "Fourth" in a label in the HTML source code to the first page where you enter this Internet Access Code.

Did they really check this system properly ?

Whether this website will fail to stand up to the strain of millions of simultaneous request, just like so many other previous Government websites have failed, remains to be seen.

Compared with the paper Census Form, there will be no ability to deliberately leave any of the Questions blank (apart from the voluntary one on Religion).

If your Address is on the specially compiled, up to date Address Register for delivery of the Census Form, and the Barcode / Internet Access Code is used to monitor which Census Forms have not been completed, and you believe the promises that only anonymised data will be released to other Government Departments or Agencies etc. then there should , technically, be no need for you to fill in your Name on this Census Form

The Independent newspaper is owned by by Alexander Lebedev a former KGB spy who was for a time on active service working at the Soviet Embassy in London. Somehow he does not attract as much "foreign controlled media" hysteria as his commercial rival the the Australian born US citizen Rupert Murdoch.

The Independent have published this misleading Letter from Glen Watson, the Census Director of the 2011 Census for England and Wales:

Letters: Perspectives on Israel and its place history

Friday, 25 February 2011

[...]

UK census data is protected

I must set the record straight on three points about the safety of the census information (letter, 23 February).

First, it is not true that EU legislation allows for census information to be shared with EU member states. No personal census information has been or will be provided to EU member states or EU institutions; only statistical tables and counts will be provided.

Weasel words.

Nobody is talking about the anonymised statistical tables and counts, provided that they are really anonymised and cannot be used to identify small groups or individuals when cross referenced with other public or private data sets.

Nobody is claiming that there are direct requests or demands for access to our Personal Data at the level of European Union Governments - this is all done via agencies much lower down the bureaucratic food chain:

We want to see proof that the Office of National Statistics and the Statistics Board have always refused (since 2007) and will continue to refuse (for the next 100 years) any Demands or Orders for our Personal Information from Police Forces or Intelligence Agencies etc. e.g. from the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), which, having absorbed the former National Criminal Intelligence Service, acts as the clearing house for Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty requests from foreign police forces from all over the world.

SOCA certainly does supply European Union institutions with information on British citizens and residents e.g. to Europol the European Union Criminal Intelligence , FRONTEX the external border guard agency, SitCen the terrorism and security intelligence clearing house, OLAF the EU fraud investigators and the massive European Union wide Schengen Information System

Second, it is not true that raw census data may be acquired by the police, intelligence agencies, immigration authorities etc under the Statistics and Registration Services Act.

More weasel words. Nobody has ever claimed that the Statistics and Registration Services Act 2007 actually introduces new legal powers "the police, intelligence agencies, immigration authorities etc " to "acquire" our Sensitive Personal Data - they have hundreds of Acts of Parliament and thousands Statutory Instrument regulations which already give them such legal powers.

Until 2007 individual officers and bureaucrats were discouraged from doing so by, the threat of being personally liable for a criminal penalty of up to 2 years in prison.

That all changed with the vast range of Exemptions which which were sneaked in to the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 section 39. Confidentiality of personal information, which does precisely the opposite of its title, it removes any legal protection from snooping on individuals or data trawling in support of mass surveillance database systems.

(4) Subsection (1) does not apply to a disclosure which--

(a) is required or permitted by any enactment,
(b) is required by a Community obligation,
(c) is necessary for the purpose of enabling or assisting the Board to exercise any of its functions,
(d) has already lawfully been made available to the public,
(e) is made in pursuance of an order of a court,
(f) is made for the purposes of a criminal investigation or criminal proceedings (whether or not in the United Kingdom),
(g) is made, in the interests of national security, to an Intelligence Service,
(h) is made with the consent of the person to whom it relates, or
(i) is made to an approved researcher.

Instead of protecting the public, this section 39 only protects bureaucrats from prosecution for betraying our Census Data, no doubt with the best of intentions, but nevertheless still betraying it.

There is now no legal protection to prevent the Census 2011 personal data databases or microfiches from being handed over in bulk, to the Police or an Intelligence Agency etc., exactly as happened with the London Congestion Charge data:

See previous Spy Blog article:

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith cripples the Data Protection Act regarding the London Congestion Charge ANPR Mass Surveillance scheme

The UK Statistics Authority and the Office for National Statistics will never volunteer personal information for any non-statistical purpose.

Very commendable, but insufficient for us to trust them with our data. They can be legally compelled to do so.

If disclosure is sought, we will always refuse to allow it, and will contest the case to the maximum extent possible under the law, using each stage of appeal in the courts if necessary, to ensure statistical confidentiality.

More weasel words and a waste of public money on lawyers and courts.

Labour's repressive and over-complicated terrorism, police and financial laws etc. have been deliberately worded to abuse words like "all" or "any", without restrictions in scope, which leave Appeal Court Judges no leeway whatsoever to apply proper proportionality and common sense to find in favour of anyone challenging them.

If the Office of National Statistics and the Statistics Board still had the legal powers of the old Census Act 1920, then they would simply be threatening to criminally prosecute the "police, intelligence agencies, immigration authorities etc" if they attempt to gain access to our Sensitive Personal Data collated by the Census. The fact that they are only vaguely promising to "contest the case to the maximum extent possible under the law, using each stage of appeal in the courts if necessary," is an admission that their former legal powers to preserve confidentiality have been crippled.

Third, it is not true that the US Patriot Act could give the US government access to personal census data. Under the contractual and operational arrangements, no employees of Lockheed Martin UK or of its US parent or of any other US company will be able to access personal census data. All of the data processing is done in the UK and all of the data will remain in the UK.

Glen Watson, Census Director, 2011 Census, Titchfield, Hampshire

Even more weasel words.

There are some groups of people organising protests against this Census simply because of the involvement of Lockheed Martin, a massive US military defense contractor which also happens to own subsidiaries which do non-military work for governments around the world as well.

The US Government could easily pressure Lockheed Martin to allow, for example, undercover CIA agents or foreign born intelligence assets, to be recruited into the core UK Census staff, because, as prime contractors, they will have full access to the CV's of all of the key technical and managerial people working on the project, regardless of the fact that they will be employed by nominally UK based companies.

As this job advert for a Census 2011 Infrastructure Support Analyst
clearly shows, Lockheed Martin will retain the technical ability to introduce spyware or to gain total access to the personal Census Data, if they wanted to.

Assist with the installation and testing of system and application patches as directed by client's technical Rapid Response Team, RRT, based in the USA.

The actual Census Data Capture Centre, with 1300 temporary employees, is housed in an 800,000 square foot warehouse located on the corner of Marshall Stevens Way and Westinghouse Road, Trafford Park, Manchester M17 1QP

http://www.secret-bases.co.uk/secret.htm#census2011

Lockheed Martin do not run this directly themselves, it is run by a nominally British company called

UK Data Capture Ltd
4th Floor
Cottons Centre
Cottons Lane
London
SE1 2QG
United Kingdom

Is it just a coincidence that much of the rest of the 4th Floor of the Cottons Centre, on the south bank of the River Thames, between London Bridge and HMS Belfast, is taken up by Control Risks, a Security / Risk company which employs many UK ex-military and intelligence services personnel ?

Will these spooks / ex-spooks have physical and electronic access to UK Data Capture Ltd. offices and electronic communications ? Or will these also be swept up as "interesting" collateral information by the commercial rivals and foreign government agencies who are spying on Control Risks activities ?

According to the Mail on Sunday, UK Data Capture Ltd is

Personal details in UK census to be processed by U.S. form which stole Obama's student loan records

[...]

UK Data Capture was formed by Vangent and Edexcel in 2007 specifically for the UK census, which will take place on March 27.

Its financial structure means that data handled by staff is not subject to the US Patriot Act.

Under the Act, introduced a month after 9/11, the US security services are able to demand data under the control of American companies or even simply accessible to them, if they believe it could help fight terrorism. Accordingly, Vangent Ltd - a wholly-owned subsidiary of its US parent company of the same name - has a 49 per cent shareholding in UK Data Capture, while Edexcel has a 50 per cent holding.

The remaining one per cent is held by a business consultant. The company is sub-contracted by Lockheed Martin UK, a subsidiary of another American firm, which is in charge of managing the census.

[...]

The [ONS] spokesman added: 'UK Data Capture is a UK-controlled and registered company. Vangent is a minority shareholder and therefore UK Data Capture is clearly not a subsidiary of a US company.

This arrangement was put in place to ensure that the Patriot Act cannot apply.

Guess where Vangent has its offices ?

It is also on the 4th Floor of the Cottons Centre !

This does appear to be a deliberate attempt to pretend that the US PATRIOT Act does not apply, whilst glossing over the vast range of UK "national security" legislation which now can be used to force the ONS to share our Sensitive Personal Data with organisations who were previously forbidden from getting access to it.

However, regardless of any "Spooks" scenarios, the real risk of the vast US Government bureaucracy getting its paws on our Personal Census Data is via its daily contacts with UK police forces, intelligence agencies and Central Government Departments.

(e) is made in pursuance of an order of a court,
(f) is made for the purposes of a criminal investigation or criminal proceedings (whether or not in the United Kingdom),
(g) is made, in the interests of national security, to an Intelligence Service,

The Census 2011 media hype is starting to ramp up with this Press Release:

Employees need to know their workplace postcode

where the Office for National Statistics reiterate their bureaucratic desire to snoop on your job / workplace address.

The Census 2011 Questions for England and Wales (.pdf) demand answers about "availability for work" in the past month, treating everyone as if they were all signing on to the dole at the local "Job Centre". They also ask:

33 In your main job, are (were) you:

• an employee?
  
• self-employed or freelance without employees?
  
• self-employed with employees?

34 What is (was) your full and specific job title?

35 Briefly describe what you do (did) in your main job.

36 Do (did) you supervise any employees?

• Yes
  
• No

37 At your workplace, what is (was) the main activity of your employer or business?

38 In your main job, what is (was) the name of the organisation you work (worked) for?

Write in the business name
Or tick: No organisation, for example, self- employed, freelance, or work (worked) for a private individual

[...]

40 In your main job, what is the address of your workplace?

Write in the address. If you work at or from home, on an offshore installation, or have no fixed workplace, tick one of the boxes below

• Mainly work at or from home
  
• Offshore installation
  
• No fixed place

These will not be contentious questions for many people, but for tens of thousands of people, the existence of such a National Database will represent a threat to their personal security or a threat to national security.

The Census 2011 Personal Information data is only Protectively Marked to almost the lowest category i.e. RESTRICTED, but such information like the entire listing of the Names, Date of Birth, Home Addresses, relationship details of Family Members, Job Titles, Employer's Name, Address, Postcode should be classified as SECRET or even TOP SECRET, when it applies, as it does to all UK based members of groups like:

• MI5 Security Service
• MI6 Secret Intelligence Service
• GCHQ,
• DIS Defence Intelligence Staff
• Special Forces like the SAS
• Military personnel
• Police Officers
• HMRC investigators
• Serious Organised Crime Agency officers
• Prison Officers
• Judges
• Prosecutors
• Undercover Confidential Human Intelligence Sources
• People living under Witness Protection Schemes
• Women hiding from their abusive or violent partners or stalkers
• Key personnel who have access to the controls to the Critical National Infrastructure e.g. senior staff at a nuclear power station etc.
• Pharmaceutical Research and Development scientists harassed by animal extremists.

All of these groups and others, normally attempt to keep their Home Addresses or the fact that they work for a particular organisation secret, due to real or imagined threats to their personal security.

The insistence by the ONS on "full and specific" Job Titles, Employers Address, Location(s) and Post Code(s) etc. effectively tags such personnel to foreign intelligence agencies, crime gangs, terrorists and to stalkers within the bureaucracy.

e.g. Postcodes for

GCHQ at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire - GL51 0EX
MI5 the Security Service at Thames House, London - SW1P 1AE
MI6, Vauxhall Cross, London, SE1 1BD
Sizewell B Nuclear Power Station, Suffolk, IP16 4UR
Huntingdon Life Sciences research laboratories, Alconbury, Cambridgeshire - PE28 4HS
Her Majesty's Prison Wandsworth, London, SW18 3HS (largest UK prison population, full of illegal mobile phones and drugs and some corrupt or coerced prison officers)
Her Majesty's Prison Woodhill, Milton Keynes, - MK4 4DA high security prison with Muslim terrorist suspects and convicted terrorists.
Maghaberry Prison, Lisburn, Northern Ireland - BT28 2NF -
high security prison with IRA / UDA convicted terrorists.
New Scotland Yard - HQ of the Metropolitan Police Service, London - SW1H 0BG

These Census 2011 Questions even fall foul of the former Labour government's controversial "thought crime" legislation e.g.

Terrorism Act 2000 section 58 Collection of information

and

Terrorism Act 2000 section 58A Eliciting, publishing or communicating information about members of armed forces etc

This applies to current and former members of the armed forces, police constable and members of the intelligence services, even ones who have been dismissed from service.

Astonishingly, Section 58A is not going to be amended or repealed as promised before the General Election, according to the Conservative / Liberal Democrat Coalition Government's Review of counter-terrorism and security powers

Section 58A is as yet untested in the Court, however section 58 has been used to send several people to prison who had only collected some personal Information about one single soldier, so it must also apply to those who seek to collect, collate and concentrate such "potential death list" data on all of the people in the UK whose occupations put them and their families at real or imagined risk of violence from foreign spies, serious organised criminal gangs or terrorists.

Both sections have a "reasonable excuse" defence, but that only comes into play after your life has been ruined by being arrested (possibly at gunpoint in a dawn raid, where there is a real risk of getting shot), photographed, fingerprinted and DNA sampled, then charged under Terrorism legislation, thereby blacklisting internationally you for the rest of your life, even if you are acquitted or the charges are dropped.

If the hundreds of thousands of people in the categories listed above are not prosecuted for refusing to fill in a Census Form, or for not filling it in as accurately or as fully as the Office for National Statistics demands, then why should any of the rest of us be forced to do so either, if we feel strongly about particularly intrusive Census Questions ?

The Census 2011 press release:

Employees need to know their workplace postcode

Businesses throughout England and Wales are being asked by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to make sure that their employees know the postcode of their place of work so that they can record it on their 2011 Census questionnaires in March.

Knowing their workplace postcode is a key piece of information that feeds into the overall picture of life in England and Wales. Details of where people live, where they work and how they travel to their place of employment provide important statistics for transport planning and other strategic decisions.

The address and postcode of the employer is one of a number of questions contained in the census questionnaire about jobs, place of work, hours of employment and methods of travel to work. Answers to these questions help to build a profile of the economy of England and Wales and provide the foundation for other labour market and economic statistics published by ONS.

Note that the ONS makes no provision for simply filling in, say only the first 4 digits of the Post Code, which would be more than adequate for such planning purposes,.

Why should we let them be so unnecessarily intrusive ?

In the 2001 Census, nearly 8 per cent of questionnaires did not include a workplace postcode. In some parts of the country, the figure was as high as 18 per cent and large number of calls were taken by the census contact centre from people who were unsure about their work address.

8 per cent must be about 2 million questionnaires.

How many of those people were prosecuted for not filling in a "workplace postcode" ?

Possibly none of the 38 prosecutions since 2001 were only for this.

Deputy 2011 Census Director, Pete Benton, said, "While everyone is likely to know their own postcode at home, many won't know the postcode of their workplace.

"As well as asking for an employer's name, the questionnaire also asks for an address and postcode. While the internet makes it easier to look it up, not everyone has access to the web so we are asking all employers to make sure that their staff have the right information to enable them to complete this section of the questionnaire."

As well as underpinning the planning of public services, census statistics are also used extensively by the private sector. Information on such things as the skill and age profile of the workforce and where people live can help businesses to decide where to place new offices, factories and other places of work and what training they need provide for their employees.

So that would be the very definition of "excessive data collection" then: the collection of extra detailed information which is not directly relevant to an individual's daily life.

Dr Adam Marshall, Director of Policy at the British Chambers of Commerce said, "Businesses need this information to be able to make the right investment decisions. Census statistics can affect plans for business expansion and new industry, so it is worth making sure staff know their postcodes before completing these surveys.

From a purely selfish, profit centred, perspective, why should an established business make it easier for new competitors to start up, or for old ones to expand ?

All the relevant information about home addresses and work addresses is already known by the Government regarding the vast numbers of people who work in the public sector. Each Government department could collate and anonymise and transparently publish this information about itself on its own website or on a shared transport planning website.

"Having the right transport infrastructure in place is part of this overall picture and something as simple as making sure that your employees know their workplace postcode can really help this process."

Previous Census data has not succeed in producing "the right transport infrastructure", in the past, due to all of the other political and financial factors, so why should it be any different with the Census 2011 ?

There is an unacceptable cost to personal privacy and security, because the Census Questions are too detailed and too intrusive .

Remember, that for the England and Wales Census 2011, there is no longer any guarantee that your Personal Sensitive Information will not be handed over, on pain of up to 2 years in prison under the Census Act 1920, in secret, to a vast array of Government agencies and others, as a result of the wide ranging Exemptions introduced by the former Labour government's Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 section 39. Confidentiality of personal information

Census Day is 27 March 2011 and more information is available from www.census.gov.uk
-Ends-

For further information, images and interviews:

Press Hotline: 01329 447654

Email: 2011censuspress@ons.gsi.gov.uk

Visit: www.census.gov.uk/2011press

Twitter: www.twitter.com/2011censuspress

There are only 69 days left before the mandatory United Kingdom Census on Sunday 27th March 2011

The Office for National Statistics has issued a misleading Press Release which seeks to allay the understandable public fears about what the risks are to their Sensitive Personal Data in regard to the involvement of he massive United States defence contractor Lockheed Martin.

The management executives of Lockheed Martin are obviously in no position to refuse any requests for demands for confidential UK census data data by US Government agencies, out of patriotic duty and for fear of threats to their huge multi-billion pound US Government contracts.

14 January 2011

2011 Census and Lockheed Martin UK

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) carries out the Census in England and Wales. ONS is using a number of specialist companies to provide specific services for the census. The contract for processing the census questionnaires is not with the Lockheed Martin USA.It is with Lockheed Martin UK which is a UK based subsidiary. The contract was awarded in August 2008 to Lockheed Martin UK as it offered the best value for money in an open procurement scheme, carried out under European law.

There is an exemption under European competition law for public contracts which allows Governments not to open tenders to foreign companies, for systems which have "security" implications.

The contract has created around 1,500 jobs in the UK.

The contract is for £150 million, so that is £100,000 per job created in the UK.

Surely there are much cheaper job creation schemes than that ?

Security safeguards for census data

Concerns expressed about the possibility of the US Patriot Act being used by US intelligence services have been addressed by a number of additional contractual and operational safeguards. These arrangements have been put in place to ensure that US authorities are unable to access census data.

• All data processing will be carried out in UK - no data will leave or be held at any point outside the UK;

That is hard to believe, especially for the Still Secret Online Completion Census 2011 Web Site

The current http://www.census2011.gov.uk website tries to hand over your IP address and Web Browser details etc. to the US based company Google, by sneaking in Google Analytics javascript into their home page:

<script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-3503239-21"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}</script>

Is the Office for National Statistics really so technically incompetent that it cannot analyse its own webserver logfile statistics ?

• All data is the property of the ONS and only UK/EU owned companies will have any access to personal census data.

No ! It is our data as individual citizens and residents of the UK, it does not belong to the the ONS !

It is intolerable for the ONS or any other Government department to falsely claim exclusive ownership of people's names or addresses or familial relationships or religious beliefs or any of the other answers to the intrusive Census Questions.

Which part of "Only I Own My Own Name" etc. do these bureaucrats not understand ?

• The only people who have access to the full census dataset in the operational data centre will be ONS staff.

Misleading weasel words.

• What about partial census datasets rather than "the full census dataset" ?
• What about once data is copied and sent out of the "operational data centre" ?
• What about the Approved Researchers ?

• No Lockheed Martin staff (from either the US parent or UK company) will have access to any personal census data.

Surely Lockheed Martin staff will have access to the census form optical character reading software and databases ?

• ONS will control system access rights to all data systems;

So what ?

That is not in itself, any guarantee that your Sensitive Personal Data will not be copied and shared without your consent.

• Existing law already prevents the disclosure of census data - it is a criminal offence to disclose personal census data and is punishable by a fine and/or up to two years in prison.

No !!

This gives the misleading impression that somehow our Sensitive Personal Data can never be handed over individually or in bulk to anybody else apart from ONS staff.

See

Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 section 39. Confidentiality of personal information

(1) Subject to this section, personal information held by the Board in relation to the exercise of any of its functions must not be disclosed by--

(a) any member or employee of the Board,
(b) a member of any committee of the Board, or
(c) any other person who has received it directly or indirectly from the Board.

[...]

(4) Subsection (1) does not apply to a disclosure which--

(a) is required or permitted by any enactment,
(b) is required by a Community obligation,
(c) is necessary for the purpose of enabling or assisting the Board to exercise any of its functions,
(d) has already lawfully been made available to the public,
(e) is made in pursuance of an order of a court,
(f) is made for the purposes of a criminal investigation or criminal proceedings (whether or not in the United Kingdom),
(g) is made, in the interests of national security, to an Intelligence Service,
(h) is made with the consent of the person to whom it relates, or
(i) is made to an approved researcher.

There is also a "get out of jail free" provision for any ONS bureaucrats or sub-contractors under the amendments introduced by the Census Confidentiality Act 1991:

1 Unlawful disclosure of information

In section 8 of the [1920 c. 41.] Census Act 1920 (penalties), the following subsections shall be substituted for subsection (2)--

[...]

(4) It shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (2) or (3) to prove--

(a) that at the time of the alleged offence he believed--

(i) that he was acting with lawful authority; or

[...]

i.e. this data can and will be handed over, without penalty, to:

the 56 geographical and 8 non-geographical UK Police Forces
• the three UK Intelligence Agencies (MI5, MI6 and GCHQ), the Department for Work and Pensions,
• private investigators working for the DWP hunting down "benefits cheats",
• Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs tax investigators,
• approved Insurance Industry "anti-fraud" investigators / private investigators,
• the Home Office Borders and Immigration Agency,
• the Serious Organised Crime Agency (either for domestic investigations into Serious Crimes, or for these and also for minor investigations if requested by a Foreign Law Enforcement agency under Mutual Legal Assistance treaties,
• Lawyers in civil Court Cases e.g. for Divorce or Libel or Copyright Infringement etc.,
• Local Authority Trading Standards departments,
• Local Authority Environmental Health departments
• etc. etc. etc.

N.B. none of these organisations should be allowed to have access to Census Data, if the idea of the census is to be comprehensive and inclusive of those groups in society who have every reason to fear and distrust the bureaucracy.

• All census employees and contractors working on the census sign a declaration of confidentiality to guarantee their understanding and compliance with the law.

What exactly is the text of this "declaration of confidentiality" ?

• Independent checks by an accredited UK security consultancy of both physical and electronic security are carried out for ONS.

Which "accredited UK security consultancy" has been given this contract ?

-ENDS-

For further information, images and interviews:

Press Hotline: 01329 447654

Email: 2011censuspress@ons.gsi.gov.uk

Visit: www.census.gov.uk/2011press

Twitter: www.twitter.com/2011censuspress

Will any mainstream media journalists bother to question the ONS about these issues, or will we have to do it instead ?

The 2011 Census is rapidly approaching on Sunday 27th March 2011 and the Government bureaucracy is preparing its media spin and propaganda campaign:

Have a look at this Census 2011 Press centre page: Local Press resources, updated 27th November 2010

[...]

Media incident guidelines

The 2011 Census press team has established a comprehensive media handling and issue tracking process. The press team will focus its resources on national and regional press, TV and radio. However, certain events and local press enquiries could mean that you want some support. Possible scenarios are:

Negative local media coverage: If you become aware of any negative local media coverage about the 2011 Census which may affect return rates or could damage the reputation of the 2011 Census and/or ONS, please contact your local census area manager or ACLM.

Difficult press enquiries: Press enquiries can be passed on to your 2011 Census area manager if:

• you do not feel confident that you have enough information to satisfy a specific journalist request/enquiry
• the journalist asks for an official ONS comment
• the journalist is looking for information outside your area
• you are unsure of the angle the journalist is taking - or suspect they may take a negative line

Other events: If ever something happens that you think could become a media issue, please call your 2011 Census area manager to talk it through.

For all emergencies requiring urgent communication with the 2011 Census press team in Titchfield, please call the 2011 Census Press Hotline:

01329 447654

2011 Census press officers are available on this number 24 hours a day. This is a press hotline and should only ever be used in an emergency.

A 24 hour a day census media spin hotline, to counter journalists who are merely "suspected" of "taking a negative line"

This is in itself, highly suspicious - what exactly are they trying to hide ?

Social media guidelines

The 2011 Census campaign includes activities to monitor and engage appropriately with social media. The viral nature of social media calls for extra care whenever your team is representing the 2011 Census in social media, Please observe our guidelines to avoid a social media crisis.

If you are at all unsure, please contact us at 2011censusLAcomms@ons.gov.uk for advice.

Will this "social media monitoring and engagement" manage to detect this blog post and its corresponding tweet ?

Response statements

Should the national press raise an issue that could cause public concern, damage the reputation or success of the 2011 Census, and require correction/clarification, we may publish an official response/position statement on the 2011 Census website, www.census.gov.uk/2011press. We will send you an email alert whenever these are published on the press centre. A detailed explanation of the background, research and consultation involved in developing the 2011 Census questions is available on the ONS website.

Are there any journalists or social media commentators who would like to test this spin system with some "Negative local media coverage" or "difficult press enquiries" or issues "which may raise public concern" ?

See our previous Spy Blog article United Kingdom (England & Wales) Census Day - Sunday 27th March 2011 - will you boycott the intrusive, snooping questions ?

Some Questions to Ask:

1. The outsourcing of the Census data processing to the United States defence contractor Lockheed Martin, whose company officers and executives have no choice under the US Patriot Act but to allow US Government agencies to snoop on our unredacted, not yet anonymised Census data . What proof is there that US employees or citizens will have no access to our Census Data ?

2. The mysterious, secret, Census 2011 Online Completion website, which will be available from March 5th 2011.
   
   
   
   • Why is there no preview URL for the public and media to check the "look and feel" and functionality ?
     
   • What strength of SSL / TLS Digital Certificate and cryptographic algorithms will be employed, if any ?
     
   • What proof is there that the data will not be shipped from the webserver to back end servers unencrypted ?
     
   • Will the web forms attempt to force you to answer every Question, even if you want to leave something blank ?
     
   • Will the website employ web bugs and foreign based Google tracking cookies (like the Census 20111 website does, for no good reason)
     
   • What Communications Data logfile tracking will there be ? This would be a bonanza for Google or other tracking cookie systems if they are in place.
     
   • What measures exactly are in place to prevent the "Census Online Completion" website from grinding to a halt, due to entirely predictable peak demand, as we have seen with previous Office of National Statistics historical census websites and with the HMRC self assessment tax return website etc. ?
     

3. What proof is there that there will not be Another Massive Data Loss Disaster involving CDs, DVDs, USB memory devices, laptop computer losses or thefts, as we have seen with HMRC and the Ministry of Defence etc. ?

4. Can census takers and the Census board be prosecuted under the Terrorism Act 2000 section 58A Eliciting, publishing or communicating information about members of armed forces etc, which applies, without any exceptions, to all current and former members of the intelligence agencies, military personnel or police constables?
   • Will the Census contain accurate lists of the names, home addresses, workplace addresses, job titles and sensitive personal data details of all the UK based employees of MI5 the Security Service, MI6 the Secret Intelligence Service, GCHQ, the Defence Intelligence Staff, members of the Special Forces (e.g. the Special Air Service (SAS) or Special Boat Squadron (SBS) or the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) ) or the Metropolitan or West Midlands or Thames Valley Police Counter-Terrorism Command, the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU) etc ?

   • Will these groups of secret civil servants be prosecuted for not filling in the Census Form completely and accurately ? If not, then what legal basis is there for any exemption for these secretive people or for others like Judges, or Prison Warders or people in Witness Protection Schemes etc. ? There is none in the census legislation as it stands.
     

5. Most importantly, what about the fact that the old legal protections against the sharing of Sensitive Personal Data defined in the Data Protection Act 1998 Part 1 section 2 Sensitive personal data on religion, health , sexuality etc.collected during the Census have now been abolished. ?

6. What proof is there that our confidential sensitive personal data will not be shared with the intelligence agencies, the police, the immigration authorities, the tax authorities, foreign governments or private sector companies now that such sharing is exempt from the 2 years in prison penalty under the old Census Act 1921, by virtue of the wide ranging exemptions which were sneaked into the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 section 39. Confidentiality of personal information ?
   

The Census is set to be inflicted on us on Census Day / Night - Saturday 27th March 2011

Since it has, unfortunately, become impossible to trust this or any future Government with our Data Protection Act 1998 section 2 Sensitive Personal Data, the forthcoming Census, which appears to be a huge increase in the amount of bureaucratic snooping compared with the previous Census, is going to be very controversial.

SInce the data is being collected by US Defense Contractor Lockheed-Martin to data process, it will inevitably be handed over to the US Government, by hook or by crook, regardless of any legal contract signed with this weak Labour Government.

Why has the Whitehall bureaucracy been allowed to ignore the Principles of Data Minimization recommended by the Thomas and Walport Data Sharing Review?

Will the political Opposition manage to get any of these unnecessarily intrusive questions removed from this Draft Statutory Instrument, or will they just rubber stamp it "on the nod", as usual ?

Draft Statutory Instruments 2009 No. 0000

Census, England And Wales The Census (England and Wales) Order 2009

Most of the potential benefits to members of the public, in terms of planning of future government services, simply needs just the number of people living in a particular area, and does not justify these intrusive Census questions

How many of these Sensitive Personal Data Questions about Names and Addresses, Medical Data, Disabilities, Racial Ethnicity, Religious Beliefs, Recent Job History, Accommodation Details and Familial Relationships. will you try to avoid or deliberately lie about ?

Remember that Census Data is not "anonymised".at the point of collection.

[UPDATED on 30th October to include this section on the removal of the supposedly absolute confidentiality of the census data]:

Remember also that, unlike previous Censuses, the supposedly cast iron guarantee of the Census Act 1920 to prevent the sharing of this supposedly confidential census data with the Police or Intelligence agencies or the Tax authorities etc. has now been abolished by a combination of the general "get out of jail for incompetent bureaucrats" clause introduced in by the amendments sneaked in to the Census Confidentiality Act 1991

1 Unlawful disclosure of information

In section 8 of the [1920 c. 41.] Census Act 1920 (penalties), the following subsections shall be substituted for subsection (2)--

[...]

(4) It shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (2) or (3) to prove--

(a) that at the time of the alleged offence he believed--

(i) that he was acting with lawful authority; or

[...]

When this is combined with the

Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 section 39. Confidentiality of personal information

(1) Subject to this section, personal information held by the Board in relation to the exercise of any of its functions must not be disclosed by--

(a) any member or employee of the Board,

(b) a member of any committee of the Board, or

(c) any other person who has received it directly or indirectly from the Board.

[...]

(4) Subsection (1) does not apply to a disclosure which--

(a) is required or permitted by any enactment,

(b) is required by a Community obligation,

(c) is necessary for the purpose of enabling or assisting the Board to exercise any of its functions,

(d) has already lawfully been made available to the public,

(e) is made in pursuance of an order of a court,

(f) is made for the purposes of a criminal investigation or criminal proceedings (whether or not in the United Kingdom),

(g) is made, in the interests of national security, to an Intelligence Service,

(h) is made with the consent of the person to whom it relates, or

(i) is made to an approved researcher.

There is now no legal defence for the Office for National Statistics to stand up to the police, intelligence agencies, tax authorities or even High Court Orders brought by rich clients and their expensive lawyers, or other data snoopers, who want to use the census data for their own data trawling purposes to hunt down a particular individual or their family.

Here are the details of the Intrusive, and No Longer Confidential Questions which are to be demanded from you, under the threat of a fine of up to Level 3 on the Standard Scale i.e. £1000: