Privacy and the 2021 Census: jayeless.net
@jayeless this might just be my dumb socialist leanings having lived in Norway my entire life. But why would you re-count the entire country every X years, when you instead could do it once and have a central registry of where everyoneâs home address is? đ¤ˇââď¸
@hjertnes I donât know, but I suspect if you announced to the Australian people that the Census was now going to be replaced by that, people would be up in arms and make comparisons to Nazi-occupied Europe/the Warsaw Pact countries/modern-day China. On the other hand, though, most Australians do indeed have their names and addresses in centralised databases controlled by their state or territoryâs road authority đ¤ˇđťââď¸ Perhaps itâs the separation of that from potentially sensitive data like religion, ethnicity or income that makes the difference.
@jayeless the tax authorities know how much you earn, and probably also religion if religious contributions are deductible đ
@hjertnes True, but the tax office isnât running a side hustle where it sells taxpayersâ data off to whatever âpartnersâ they feel like đ I think the concern with the Census is that theyâre collecting information that they donât need for the Census, in order to open up a new revenue stream