No. I will not comply.

I will not be participating in this years "mandatory" data collection event, the 2016 Australian census .

I personally gain no benefit from and have no interest in spending my time providing this government with even more redundant private training data for the already excessive and intrusive worldwide surveillance network.

I don't recognize any alleged authority to demand that I provide any information - and I'm insulted at the media scare campaigns threatening $1800 AUD fines will be given to everybody who refuses to comply.

I have participated in the past, when all data was supposedly anonymized only for it to leak that no it wasn't oh and oops we got hacked again.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics is trying to hand-wave away any concerns about privacy or security despite reputable groups like Electronic Frontiers Australia (retweet invite) , the former privacy commissioner , their own former statisticians and senators like Scott Ludlam (retweet invite) all raising serious concerns about the methods being used and/or refusing to comply themselves.

This is what we're dealing with here in australia, government yet again pushing blindly ahead in another stupid direction despite all the best experts telling you not to. Worse they won't hesitate to threaten with fines and/or cage-time for anybody who disobeys supreme leader. It's more embarrassing and disturbing every year.

Business as usual in the land down under

Concerning Changes to 2016 census policy

Electronic Frontiers Australia (retweet invite) has done a great job educating the public about these changes. This is a short summary of a few of the worst.

Every single Australians identity remains linked to the data collected, forever.

There is some debate over whether the retention period is four years, or indefinite. However, as former ABS staffer Ross Hamilton points out, the ABS is proposing only to update identifiable information based on the 2020 Census, not to strip identifying information entirely after four years.
This constitutes a massive expansion compared to last Census, when this applied to only 5% (1 million people) of the population.

The data about each person, from all available Census and ABS surveys, will be linked together.

This is the stated explanation for identifying information being held: that with it, the ABS may build up an extremely robust profile of each individual in the country by linking and cross-referencing the various datasets it has available to it.
This again constitutes a massive expansion compared to last year where this applied to only 5% (1 million people) of the population.

Additional data will be expropriated from other sources and added to each person’s record

This is entirely new, and very concerning. Electronic Frontiers Australia has raised concerns over the breadth and depth of data already held by political parties, and taken together with the expansions in the ABS’s data collection and retention practices, it paints a very bleak picture of the future of privacy in Australia.

Individual data about people and households will be made available to researchers.

Nominally it will be de-identified, but in practice it will be so rich that it will be readily re-identifiable.
This, again, is entirely new this year. As shown in recent research, de-identification of datasets is a very complex and involved process, which very often fails. In fact, so long as groups have another form of identifying information, de-identifying anonymised datasets has been shown to be fairly simple.

In some cases, the individual data that is released to researchers will even include address, and "anonymised versions of names" (whatever that means).

This is also new, or at least believed to be new, in 2016. As Roger Clarke notes, however, “[p]ossibly the ABS is already doing this, without public knowledge”.

So .. what happens now ?

Apparently the ABS plans to send even more doorknockers house to house to harrass everyone that didn't comply. With their constant budget cuts and general ineptitude that seems like a huge waste of resources - especially if we all do it..

If that time comes I will peacefully, calmly attempt a logical discussion with the doorknocker, remembering that he's just another meatbag stuck on the same sinking ship - "Just doing their job".
Maybe I'll even get him on steemit

If anything happens to me or my family I'll be sure to keep the blockchain updated :)

Aussies - Are you going to follow orders ?

Bonus Comic

This is from Australian comic author "firstdogonmoon" , who's character regularly spouts anarchist and voluntaryist philosophies and interesting tidbits. Yet another person I've contacted to get on steemit - please reweet.

@ausbitbank and my partner @krystle for more
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Night Owls - Lets not go blind today with my Steemit Dark theme
Critical Thinkers - Come join me as we venture #downtherabbithole

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