ACORNS?
I got your ACORNS
Molon Labe!
Posted on 04/29/2009 11:05:18 AM PDT by EternalVigilance
ACORNS?
I got your ACORNS
Molon Labe!
So, the folks are imagining these people out in front of their houses with handhelds?
It's in the census' public schedule anyhow:
November 2008 to July 2009
Census Bureau prepares for and conducts the Address Canvassing Operation using GPS equipped hand-held computers.
And yes I took a picture of her and her car as well.
The mapping of addresses doesn’t bother me so much. My house number is public information— that’s why we put them on the outside of the house— and is easily located by anyone with access to Google maps. sounds like they are doing this to be able to plot the data they get, graphically on GIS maps.
What I think IS very troubling is this bidness of moving the Census to the direct control of the White House. The obvious objective, seems to me, is to then allow the President to personally re-district Congress however he pleases. The maps will help that greatly.
Mapping the data isn’t the problem. It’s actually an interesting and probably useful way to analyze data. It’s what they want to DO with the data that’s scary.
The mapping of addresses doesn’t bother me so much. My house number is public information— that’s why we put them on the outside of the house— and is easily located by anyone with access to Google maps. sounds like they are doing this to be able to plot the data they get, graphically on GIS maps.
What I think IS very troubling is this bidness of moving the Census to the direct control of the White House. The obvious objective, seems to me, is to then allow the President to personally re-district Congress however he pleases. The maps will help that greatly.
Mapping the data isn’t the problem. It’s actually an interesting and probably useful way to analyze data. It’s what they want to DO with the data that’s scary.
bkmk
bookmark
Are they planning mass raids on non Obamunist Americans?
stop.. LOL I’m being series!
Heh. Maybe that’s what’s prompting this data-gathering: while Google et al have coordinates for all homes, that data is too often wrong. Dynamic entries on the wrong houses doesn’t go over well with the public.
ping
because of the acorn involvement, i may decide to take the fine.
They tried multiple times...
The last one that came..was a "friend" in fact a VP at the bank where I banked.
I told her why I didn't think it was any business of the Feds to know more than how many people lived here. She was uncomfortable about it...I'm sure. I finally just gave the bare minimum answers...
I still am friends with her...although she thinks I'm in the witness protection program. Ha!!
I've another friend...that refused all questions. He said they NEVER fined him........
Who knows...frankly I think hundreds of thousands of people ought to tell them to "jump off"!!
Yeah, it creates too much paperwork for them when they shoot the wrong dog.
ping
Not tinfoil this time.
There’s some pretty darned good compact digital pianos out there (still kicking myself for not getting a dirt cheap Roland ??-88 15+ years ago). Boats are attractive, but a little too isolating & expensive for my taste. Monster house-on-wheels fifth-wheel my folks just got and are visiting me in would be perfect.
Trying desperately to pare down my possessions to one large case...
makeing a note of this
census questions to be asked etc
http://2010.census.gov/2010census/recent_news/011812.html
pdf file, more detailed...
http://2010.census.gov/2010census/pdf/2010ACSnotebook.pdf
GOOGLE
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=census+and+gps&aq=f&oq=
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5590541
Two-and-a-half years from now, in early 2009, the Census Bureau plans to send an army of 100,000 temporary workers down every street and dusty, dirt road in America. They will be armed with handheld GPS devices.
Robert LaMacchia, head of the Census Bureau’s geography division, says they’ll capture the latitude and longitude of the front door of every house, apartment and improvised shelter they find.
“We will actually knock on doors and look for hidden housing units,” he says. “We will find converted garages; from the outside, it may not look like anybody lives there.”
But census workers will add each dwelling, legal or not, to the Census Bureau’s Master Address File.
Recent proposed budget cuts have put part of this plan in jeopardy. But if Congress restores the money, the census will end up with the geographic coordinates — accurate to within 10 feet — for about 110 million residences.
But the Census Bureau can’t, by law, share that list with anyone, even local governments. LaMacchia says the information has to be treated as confidential. Otherwise, people might lie, and the census wouldn’t be accurate.
“People would not tell us about hidden housing units,” LaMacchia says. “People would not respond to the questionnaire if they believed that that information would be turned over to law enforcement or code enforcement and become public information.”
Mapping Might Save Lives
Shoreh Elhami, director of Geographic Information Systems in Delaware County, Ohio, says this sort of information can save lives.
“Having a geographic dataset that is accurate, comprehensive and current is priceless,” Elhami says.
Her passion and devotion have made Delaware County, a fast-growing area just north of Columbus, one of the most meticulously mapped areas of the country.
At her computer, with a few clicks of the mouse, Elhami can pull up a complex, multi-layered picture of Delaware County. Standard commercial software lets her highlight sewer lines, flood plains or real estate tracts. She can pick any address and retrieve pictures of that building from overhead and from the street, along with information about its owner.
The map can answer questions you never expected to ask, she says. Last year, a big storm came through. A reservoir on the Olentangy River, just upstream from the town, was in danger of overflowing, and authorities thought they might have to release water through the dam.
Nobody knew how many people in the town of Delaware might be flooded out of their homes. Elhami rushed to her electronic map. She added a new layer to the picture — an image she’d received from the Army Corps of Engineers showing low-lying areas that would end up under water.
The image showed the outline of the “inundation zone,” and within it, lines and clusters of little red dots. Each of those dots was a house that lay within the potential flood zone.
“The software allows you to do a count of every one of those residences and produce a file of those addresses,” she says.
Elhami delivered that file to emergency managers, and they quickly called the people at each address. Fortunately, the storms subsided, and no flood came.
Every address in the county is in a database, complete with geographic coordinates so it will show up accurately on a map.
Assembling that data is a time-consuming effort. On one recent summer morning, Caleb Gutshall and Sheri Feasel trudged down North Winter Street, in Delaware, checking each address on this commercial strip and making sure that the county’s list of occupants was accurate. They also take pictures of any new buildings. One door was unnumbered and locked. Gutshall peered in the window, but learned nothing. “It doesn’t look like anybody’s in there,” he said.
Now the Census Bureau is planning to undertake much the same kind of effort, on a massive scale, covering the entire country. Elhami says that the Master Address File could be a priceless resource for many counties that don’t have the resources to collect that information on their own.
Private Companies Push for Data
Pressure is growing to change the law and make this information available. Demand for geographic data is booming.
Private companies would love to get their hands on the Census Bureau’s data. Web sites like Mapquest.com or maps.google.com, usually show addresses within the correct city block, but they will point to the correct house less than half the time.
Don Cooke, an executive from the mapping company TeleAtlas, says the Census Bureau’s database would immediately solve that problem, and he’d like to use it.
“The laws basically say the intellectual property that’s generated by the government belongs to us citizens, so I’d like to get it,” he says. “Because I don’t want to spend the money to go out and compile it!”
They just came here and left a paper describing why they were on the property.
If I’d known this was done, I would have kicked the guy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.