Big Brother's Census

So, I normally do not look forward to checking my mail. It seems that Publisher's Clearing House forgot their promise that I was the winner of a major prize, and somebody named SCE&G seems to think I owe them $300 a month. That's the only real correspondence I receive via the US Mail, so anyone can imagine my disdain for the mailman (even my dog seems to hate the guy). However, being a good, law-abiding citizen, I perform my requisite daily duty of checking the old inbox.

It seems, though, that Uncle Sam has not caught on to my mailbox blues, and, last week, really kicked it up a notch. See, my
residence has been "scientifically selected" (whatever that means) to participate in the American Community Survey. For those of you who may not be familiar with the survey (a demographic that included myself until last week), it is billed as a supplement to thedecennial census, aimed at gathering information to disseminate to various federal, state, and local entities to help them formulate plans and divert aid. The handy-dandy brochure that accompanied the survey explains that the valuable information I provide will go to government bodies that determine things like police and fire station locations, housing aid, and "to show a large corporation that a town has the workforce it needs."

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for government handouts, at least when they come to me. However, the questions on the
survey raised some serious concerns on my part. For example, I have to provide intrusive information about all the residents of my house, my relationship to those persons, where they work, if they don't work, why not and for how long, as well as about 10 pages of other questions. Now, I'm not going to get on my soap box, wrap myself in an American flag, and spout off truisms about this being a "free country" or anything, I'm not that naive. However, I was curious as to just how the
census bureau justified asking such intrusive questions and requiring their answers under threat of penalties.

Being the responsible law student that I am, I immediately turned to my favorite online legal research site, and began digging. What I found was: 1) theACS has never been challenged in a court of law; 2) the ACS is not specifically sanctioned under any legislative act; 3) the office of the US Comptroller General has written a memo to a Congressional
oversight committee attempting to justify theACS; 4) that memo finds the authority to compel answers to the ACS not in any specific statute, but inferred from the text of at least 2 separate statutes (see 13 USC §§ 141, 193); 5) that those statutes call for supplementary census information only for the purpose of furthering the singular goal of the census; 6) that the singular goal of the census is the apportionment of US Representatives based on population.

So, to recap, save a legal memo put out in defense of the ACS, I couldn't find anything truly justifying its existence, except perhaps some loose and non-legal argument about the need for up-to-date information on US citizens to better divert government monies to those who are in need. My question (or at least one of them) is why is the Federal government collecting all this data for services that are traditionally provided by state and local governments?