Julian Sanchez writes that the reaction to Congresswoman Michelle Bachman’s stance on filling out census data is a bit naive.

Still, I find it extraordinary that at the very sites where, not too long ago, one used to read routinely about these abuses as carried out by a Republican administration, it’s suddenly considered utterly batty to imagine such a thing could happen again—or at least, it’s considered batty for a Republican to imagine it. I wish I were as sure.

An uncharitable read of Julian’s post might claim that he is “weak manning” the argument.  However, I think there is utility in attacking a weak man argument when (1) the weak man argument is widely believed or distributed and (2) when there is an acknowledgment that the defeat of the weak man argument does not settle the larger question the argument was said to address.

Julian stakes out an opinion of his own that is neither Bachmann’s nor the weak criticism of it.  He writes:

Sadly, the best reason not to fear abuses of personal census data is that it’s probably unnecessary: We know the NSA has been conducting a massive and elaborate data mining program that hunts for complex patterns across telephone and credit card records. Getting coy on your census form isn’t going to throw a wrench in the works at Ft. Meade.

I have to respectfully disagree with Julian here.  I would have to say that the best reason not to fear abuses of personal census data is because the risks of accruing personal harm for disclosing census data seem to me to be very small compared to the group benefits of having accurate measurements about your demographic information for the purposes of public administration.

By saying that horrible chapters like internment are unlikely, I do not mean to say I think they could never happen, nor do I mean to trivialize the enormity of the harms to civil liberties in such instances.  What I do mean to say is that in properly weighing this potential harm, we are very likely to forget the massive amounts of largely boring, but important public administration that gets done by everyday bureacrats with the aid of good census data — not to mention the advances in soical science research and assistance in furthering public discussion from time to time (it seems to me that if we are to make responsible public choices, it would be helpful to know who, as a democratic citizen, I am making decisions with and for).