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.

1950: During White House renovations, the Secret Service asks the Census Bureau to provide information about the people in a neighborhood where they hope to move President Truman temporarily. Census coordinator, Ed Goldfield, denies their request.

1960: The Census Bureau modernizes its procedures to prevent anyone from accessing confidential information in the new computer age.

1961: Congress strengthens the law so that even copies of census questionnaires kept in your possession cannot be used as evidence against you in a court of law.

1980: Armed with a search warrant authorizing them to seize census documents, four FBI agents enter the Census Bureau’s Colorado Springs office. No confidential information is ever released because a census worker holds off the agents until her superiors resolve the issue with the FBI.

1982: When local officials try to obtain confidential census information, the Supreme Court upholds the law and denies access to these records.

1990: Millions of questionnaires from movie stars, politicians, millionnaires, welfare recipients, and your friends and neighbors are processed wthout any breach of trust.

2000: Backed by a strong privacy law (Title 13 of the U.S. Code), the Census Bureau will bring together all of its resources to make sure its record of excellence remains unbroken.