An Equal Opportunity Employer
U.S. Census Bureau
U.S. Department of Commerce
Economics and Statistics Administration
BUREAU OF THE CENSUS
The Census Bureau
Goes All Out to Protect
Your Privacy
The Law Protects Your Answers.
By law, the Census Bureau cannot share your answers with the
IRS, FBI, Welfare, Immigration — or any other government
agency. No court of law, not even the President of the United
States, can find out your answers. And the same law that keeps
your answers out of the hands of these agencies, prevents the
Census Bureau from selling or giving away your address to
people who want to send you mail.
Highly Motivated Employees Protect Your Answers.
Census workers are sworn to secrecy. They know that if they
give out any information they see on a form, they can face a
$5,000 fine and a five-year prison term.
Census workers must pass security and employment reference
checks. They cannot currently work as tax collectors, assessors or
law enforcement officials. Protecting the privacy of people who reply
to the census is an important part of every census taker’s training.
Technology Protects Your Answers.
The Census Bureau protects your information with numerous
security measures, including electronic barriers, scrambling
devices and dedicated lines. Your answers are combined with
others to produce the statistical summaries that are published.
No one can connect your answers with your name or address.
Answering the Census Is Important, Easy
and Safe.
Taking part in the census is in everyone’s best interest. People
who answer the census help their communities obtain federal
funding and valuable information for planning hospitals, roads
and more. Census information helps decision-makers understand
which neighborhoods need new schools and which ones need
greater services for the elderly. The only way to make sure
people like yourself are represented in the census is to fill out
the form and encourage others to do so.
The Census Bureau’s
dedication to
confidentiality
plays an important
role in everything it