In the recent years, my general feeling is that the world has become a place where it is all about me and nothing else. This is a worrying trend in my humble opinion.
The current debate in the national census irrevocably reflects that. The paranoid and defiance was generated by the collection of personal information and the information retention policy. People are unhappy that they have to disclose their details in the form and staging protests against it. The argument was of course privacy.
The thing is, census is an extremely important exercise for the country as it provides important information of its population in one single source, making evidence based decision a lot more streamlined, saving time collecting data from multiple sources and collate them. The fact is if you need to collect data from multiple sources to provide evidence, the margin of error is significantly higher as different sources would have collected the data with different focus thus might not be completely compatible with each other. So carrying out full census at regular intervals can provide controlled data that can be compared and thus provide more precise information for policy making, and in some cases for rebuking against certain policies being made.
This centralisation of information is also the reason some people arguing against it saying it is an invasion of privacy. Also the fact that completing the census form is compulsory became an excuse to cry foul of democracy. Arguments on “I have the right not to do certain things if this is true democracy”. “I have the right to keep my information mine” flourished across the cyber space. The fact is, these arguments have only one common denominator – me.
I personally find this quite disappointing. We live in a democracy – we have the freedom that a lot of other people in this world do not enjoy or even cannot enjoy. However, we have become so egoistic about our freedom that some of us start to fail to see their civic duty is to up keep this democracy through sensible participation. The scenario is, a government was elected via a democratic process, whether you like the results or not, there is the result. It is your obligation to respect and accept the results while rebuking senseless policies – through facts. The better we understand how these facts are being collected the better we can debate on social and political issues in a constructive manner. However, refusing to do so by claiming the rights to freedom means you at the same time surrender your freedom because as uninformed as you are, you will lack the knowledge to support your arguments, which seems to be the prominent way of debating things these days, even for our politicians.
The countless threads about “I don’t like this”, “I am worrying about this” without actually studying and understanding the census process is disturbing. People keep saying they don’t want their information centralised in one place because of privacy and information security, but then at the same time they surrendered all their information to their Facebook and Google accounts for data mining, which directly contradicts to their arguments. One might say, they did it on a voluntary basis not being forced, but if the argument is about information privacy, it is about information privacy and not the way information being collected. In this day and age, everyone is an open book, whether you like it or not. As soon as you get your tax file number, everything about your financials are already recorded, that is together with your bank account, mortgage, Medicare account, passport, etc. etc. So does one really think that if the government want that information there is no way the extract it? It might take longer than using the census data but it is out there whether you like it or not. So this privacy concern is redundant. And about security, nothing is secure – all you need is a hacker to hack one of your online accounts, there is no more security to talk about. And yet all these people seemed to have completely forgotten about that.
The fact is the idea of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) will not in their best efforts protect participants’ information is absurd. Yes it is Australia, people may be a bit more laid back (enters stereotypes) but to think that the ABS doesn’t care about this issue is just weird. Yes they might have security scared or incidents in the past, but if hackers can hack into the CIA and can bring Microsoft and Sony down, what makes one think that the ABS will always be safe? Most people are always online nowadays, even one’s phone or computer could be a breeding bed for information leeches. So singling out ABS alone is not a particularly strong argument.
At the end of the day, it is up to the individuals to decide what they want to do with the census. The only words I have are “If you make your bed, you lie in it”. Don’t start pointing fingers when it is time to pay the price or take the consequence. As for me, I have done my duty and can sleep well.
