"We never forget who we're working for"
March 6, 2011 7:36 AM   Subscribe

"Our Census Business Practice successes include the U.S. 2000 Census, the United Kingdom’s 2001 Census, and Canada’s 2006 Census..."

It's census time again in the UK, and because Lockheed Martin is an American based company involved in surveillance and data processing for the CIA and FBI, there are concerns in the UK and elsewhere about who will ultimately have access to the data.
posted by ReWayne (14 comments total)
 
If I had to guess if it was more likely that a division of a contractor with considerable potential legal liability or the UK government would share the information with the US intelligence community I would pick the government by a long way. This kind of thing is one of the functions of the UKUSA intelligence alliance.
posted by jaduncan at 7:50 AM on March 6, 2011 [1 favorite]


good point... So basically regardless of who takes the census, its bound to end up in the "right" hands?
posted by ReWayne at 8:00 AM on March 6, 2011


Yes. It is also worth bearing in mind that although there are laws against some methods of spying on one's own population there is no limitation on recieving information on one's own population via information transfer and indeed other people might find it easier to make findings if they had more base information.
posted by jaduncan at 8:07 AM on March 6, 2011


The "concerns" link is to an RT.com video. Digging about on their video stream, they seem to have a rather unhealthy obsession with conspiracy theories and how the Bilderberg Group runs everything.
posted by scruss at 9:07 AM on March 6, 2011


Pretty much a nonissue for me. Defense contractors are in the business of a) making compelling proposals to government officials, b) hiring engineers out of the local community to perform the work in those proposals, and c) taking care of legal and security requirements while those engineers are working.

It's not as if some dude who was just working on Echelon is going to get reassigned to Project UK Census and decide to steal all their data. If the contract is set up right, every single engineer on the project will be a Brit and American management will be at arms length. And isn't it a good thing that there's so little defense work to go around right now that defense contractors are searching for other stuff to do?
posted by miyabo at 9:10 AM on March 6, 2011


Pretty much a nonissue for me. Defense contractors are in the business of a) making compelling proposals to government officials, b) hiring engineers out of the local community to perform the work in those proposals, and c) taking care of legal and security requirements while those engineers are working.

Exactly.
posted by jaduncan at 9:11 AM on March 6, 2011


scruss, I know of a recent Bilderberg piece they have on their youtube channel, but I don't think reporting on it ONCE qualifies for having an "unhealthy obsession with conspiracy theories."

Well I guess its settled then: having one of the world's top weapons manufacturer in control of the census data of the USA, UK, Canada, etc. is a "nonissue." How silly of me to think this was of any importance.
posted by ReWayne at 9:33 AM on March 6, 2011


No more of a concern than a strong Republican-led company controlling voting machines in the US.
posted by Mental Wimp at 12:19 PM on March 6, 2011


I worked on a few phases of the 2001 Census in Canada. The first phase was distributing Census forms door to door and following up for unreturned forms from the "WHY DOES THE GOVERNMENT WANT THIS INFO ANYHOO?!?!" yahoos. That was fine, everything ran smoothly, pay was reasonable if a bit on the skimpy side. The next phase--no word of a lie--involved sitting in a warehouse, with probably 200 others all making $12/hr or more, removing staples from the census forms and scotch-taping tears so they could be sent through the expensive new high speed scanners. We were not the only warehouse doing this, and there were 2 shifts at each. Worse still, at least 2 out of 5 days a week the delivery of census forms wouldn't show up at all and all 200 of us would sit there, doing nothing at all for 8 hours. This went on for months.

I've worked in the public service a number of times. Most positions were hard work, and while there are certainly a few in every office who slack off, most public servants are hard workers who earn their salaries. It unfairly gets a bad rap. But this time was different. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I and all the others were a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars and that management of this project was abysmal. I don't know if Lockheed Martin is the answer, and I'm not wild about the idea, but the Census shouldn't be run like the 2001 Census was.
posted by Hoopo at 12:27 PM on March 6, 2011


Hoopo, are you upset that staples and so forth had to be removed at all, or are you upset that the workers hired to do so were paid a reasonable wage?

I get that having people sit idle can rankle, but the rest of the situation seems... appropriate. If not positively a good thing.

Would you rather the papers be shipped overseas, processed in a sweatshop by workers paid a pittance and working inhuman conditions (which would transfer wealth to that other country rather than providing wages to Canadians in Canada to be spent on Canadian goods and services) and then shipped back to Canada?

I suspect the only efficiency gains Lockheed Martin would be able to provide would be to pay Canadian citizens slightly lower wages and a greater flexibility in the area of sending people home when there was no work. They may be able to spread the cost of the high-speed processing machines around among multiple clients as well, but I'm not sure what the market for Census work consists of and whether or not the scanning machines served other purposes for your government. So that may or may not be an advantage.

While replacing human labor with machine labor is, I think, a net gain for the world in general, I'm not convinced that treating people as disposable machines and paying them non-living wages is similarly positive. Sounds like Canada's already using machines where they can when it comes to the census, and it also sounds like they're committed to treating their employees with respect. This does not make me upset.

I imagine most of Lockheed's efficiency gain would be eaten up by their need to post a profit, and a significant portion of the money that went into the program would ultimately leave Canada, making you all poorer in the process. And as the Canadian government lost the ability to perform census functions in-house, the price would rise for each census, further eliminating any competitive advantage (because there is no competition).

Private contractors also have a much greater incentive to fudge reality in order to meet contract targets when compared to public servants, who operate under a different set of constraints. I would trust a public census to be more accurate than a private one in any country with low corruption.
posted by jsturgill at 1:27 PM on March 6, 2011


I should add I worked on subsequent phases too and what I'm getting at is that the staple-removal part was unnecessary in a number of ways. In 2001 the Census division of Statscan had obtained these new high-speed scanners and failed to implement it properly right down to the design of the Census forms, and had poor management of its delivery systems for actually the forms to the workers (they were supposedly coming in from a warehouse across town). Logistically it could have been pulled off far more efficiently, however I don't mean to give the impression that efficiency can only be delivered through the private sector. I'm most assuredly not that guy.

Sounds like Canada's already using machines where they can when it comes to the census, and it also sounds like they're committed to treating their employees with respect. This does not make me upset

I'd imagine that if Lockheed was involved with the 2006 Census, the machines were only used once unless Statscan lent them out. Also the employees for this project were what is classified as "casual" (terms of less than 3 months which can be renewed once, no benefits etc), so I'm not sure it's really a question of respect--they're also not represented by the union due to the length of employment. Most positions like this are by nature temporary, and it's only nominally being a public servant. They obviously have to lay off the workers when the work is done, and they call a few back (like myself) for the next phase if they feel like it. Don't get me wrong, I loved working in the public service and I've done it many times in a number of departments. But it's aggravating as well as someone who's busted his ass for minimum wage in the service industry or for $9/hr in a factory how easy it was to do next to nothing at the Census and get paid so much more, as in this particular case. There were days we did nothing but play cards.

Private contractors also have a much greater incentive to fudge reality in order to meet contract targets when compared to public servants, who operate under a different set of constraints. I would trust a public census to be more accurate than a private one in any country with low corruption.

Agreed, although I think for something like a Census there would be oversight by Statscan to ensure no one's fudging numbers. Although our current government doesn't seem too impressed with the value of a Census at all, but I digress. I'd also add I have no idea if things were always this way with the Census, it's just my own experience with the 2001 Census.
posted by Hoopo at 3:04 PM on March 6, 2011


> I don't think reporting on it ONCE qualifies for having an "unhealthy obsession with conspiracy theories."

There are two other news articles on RT.com from this year alone which quote Adrian Salbuchi claiming interference from Bilderberg in world affairs. On other news sites, the only place you hear about Bilderberg is in the comments section.
posted by scruss at 3:18 PM on March 6, 2011


You know who should have access to census data?

Everyone.
posted by blue_beetle at 5:35 AM on March 7, 2011


Everyone does have access. The UK and US publish the data online.

Or did you mean raw data for every individual? In which case, no, everyone shouldn't have that.
posted by ninebelow at 6:27 AM on March 7, 2011


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