America's 2020 Census systems are a $15bn cyber-security tire fire In 2020, America will run its once-a-decade national census, but the results may not reflect reality if hackers manage to have their way. On Tuesday, the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee heard that the 2020 census will be the first to make extensive use of electronic equipment. For example, census …
Any idea as to the hardware/software platform the census will run on and who is contracted to supply it?
"High tech doesn't equal secure"
It does actually, just not in the case of YouKnowWho™
"Dodaro said the US Government Accountability Office has identified 43 electronic systems that are to be used in the 2020 census."
That would be 42 too many and if its 43 different providers then I predict they're heading for a train wreak.
Participation would be a lot higher is it would stick with its Constitutionally mandated requirement for a headcount permitting apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives.
Their so-called 'American Community Survey' is so invasive It borders on a violation of the 4th amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The survey is not voluntary. Not that we bother using our constitution any more, mind.
Last go around had us detail: income, education, mortgage debt, marital status, race, religion. At least in my area canvassers were also recording lat/lon of residence entrances - at least until such practices became widely known.
Yes, of course all this data is in Google's great dossier factory in the sky, but must my own Govt sell my privates to these bastards? Getting a little tired of the Ministry of Truth over here...
...mines the one with the deliberately incorrect survey results in the pocket
The "2016 Business R&D and Innovation Survey", a response to which is also required by law, wasn't much better. That survey REQUIRED me to fill it out online, requiring me to create an account with security questions the answers to which the government has NO legitimate need. Even better, they also required the answers to the security questions to be different - so when two of them had the same answer it REQUIRED me to lie in order to comply with the law. In their mind your parents couldn't be born and married in the same city - go figure.....
What use is a government survey that requires you lie, while at the same time requiring you to certify that the answers to the over-invasive questions wanting confidential and proprietary information are correct under penalty of perjury? At least they didn't require me to certify the answers to their stupid security questions.
These systems are a goldmine for identity theft and go against all security best practices - yet the government still thinks that they "know best". @$!@#$% idiots.
Just collect all the data in simple text files and process them overnight. No web interfaces or other complex shit required, just transfering some files, for example via encrypted e-mail or sftp.
This shouldn't be complicated.
BTW, this famously was done on punchcards in the past. Essentially when you collect your data in text files on a central hardened computer, you can easily write programs to answer all of your statistical questions. Even if we are talking about Terabytes of data, the programs will run faster than you can write them.
So statisticians can submit their programs to that air gapped computer and get back the results.
Here's the thing.
Have you ever wondered where the raw data comes from for long term federal level policy planning?
Right here.
How valuable is being able to skew that to whatever direction you want that planning (and it's associated funding) to go?
Quite a lot.
So I'd like to think it's all encrypted from the moment of collection to the end.
BTW I think if everyone who completed it was automatically included in a lottery, with the prize dependent on the number who filled it in, the paper entries would have been more filled in.
"Census data is used to determine congressional districts for voting by assessing how many people live in a certain area."
And the Republicans are already using every possible means for voter suppression - I wonder how many ways they'll find to fiddle the results of this?
Plus of course the more plebs they can keep off the books the fewer services they need to provide for them.
The most obvious trick of course is making sure people are terrified that the Immigration enforcers will come after them, so anyone with even slightly dodgy status or with relatives who have dodgy status will stay well clear.
A good deal of the information they need on the citizenry is available from Facebook, Google and Amazon. There is also Equifax that not only gathers all financial info, but also SSN and employment salaries on all adults still breathing or dead. If these data mining entities refuse to send the data to census bureau, hack them. There is an agency for that.
If all else fails, the dark web has all the info they need for a small fee.
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