for one am not convinced there will be any appreciable difference in the overall response we obtain whether the questions are mandatory or whether they are voluntary. I think it is going to depend to a large degree on the methods used by the Census Bureau in gathering this information.

I can very definitely see how it would be objectionable to some individuals and I am inclined to think this individual's right should be protected from a question such as how many children have you had in the last 10 years, or something like this, or how many stillborn births. It may well be this person has some fear, because of some minority group he may be involved in, that you are going to try to evoke some type of birth control. The Census Bureau, of course, does not have this in their mind or thoughts at all, but the individual may read this into it and feel their individual rights are being infringed upon.

There is another thing that concerned me, which is if we do make this mandatory, all we are requiring is for them to answer. We are not requiring a truthful answer. To the best of my knowledge, a person could, if he wanted, give all kinds of false answers to these, and particularly a mailed questionnaire.

Further, with the mood that now exists in this country-basic in certain areas such as civil disorder and the rejection of authorityand those could very well be some of the areas where we want to obtain our information most-by making these mandatory it will serve exactly the opposite purpose because some of the leaders in this particular area could seize upon this as an attempt to get back at the Government for some reason, and maybe even they themselves do not know why they want to strike out at the Government, but they would simply get back at the Government by asking people not to answer. It would be designed to help them, but by making it mandatory they would say we just simply are not going to cooperate. Then what are you going to do, are you going to enforce your penalty in each and every instance if you have 50,000 people in a section that refuse to cooperate?

I think the voluntary cooperation will achieve more results and greater results than making it mandatory. But by and large it is going to be dependent upon the way that the Census Bureau goes about this. The mail-out technique I am very concerned about, and particularly in the urban areas where there is a fairly low level of education. These people are simply not going to understand the questions in many cases, and the returns, I am afraid, are going to be considerably less than the Census Bureau contemplated. This means that you have to use people to cover the area. You may have every second or third house send back a questionnaire, but when you have a canvasser going around he has to still cover that entire area. So what have you saved? I think there is more room for missing people by using the mailout, mail-back technique than any other method.

I certainly congratulate you on bringing this to our attention. Mr. Scorr. If I might comment very briefly, Mr. Chairman, these comments that have been made here about the response being 95 percent or over, and when these people are going to rebel and not answer the questions, it just seems to me we must not harass the citizens that refuse to answer the questions.

Mr. GREEN. I have just one further question.

Let's take, for example, the question on how you go to work and return, your place of work in relation to your home. Do you feel it is an invasion of privacy to ask someone this question?

We have had a number of witnesses before this committee who have urged the inclusion of a question like this. They maintain that there is a great deal of useful information that can be obtained in terms of where to put industrial parks, in terms of where to build new roads, in terms of helping to solve traffic congestion and other similar problems. Offhand, this does not seem to be a terribly personal question or a question that could be utilized to embarrass anybody or to infringe on their rights of privacy. This is a question, now being proposed for inclusion, which would enable the Federal Government, by means of computer analysis, to produce meaningful and valid statistics regarding traffic patterns in the country, among other things. Inclusion of the question would cost about $5 million. But if each locality throughout the country were forced to collect this information separately, it might cost $100 million. I would like your thoughts on this.

Mr. BETTS. My thought would be whether or not it constitutes the invasion of privacy; it certainly appears to be a harmless question which nobody would object to answering on a voluntary basis.

Mr. GREEN. I want to thank the gentleman very much for coming this morning. I assure you, Mr. Betts, we are most appreciative of the fact that you have brought this whole matter to public attention. I think it is a most worthwhile effort and we thank you again for coming.

Mr. BETTS. I want to thank the committee again and want to say also that I think the questions and the comments have indicated that maybe all of us could research a little further. If you have further hearings, which I hope you do, on the overall length of the 1970 census, I might ask the committee if I could appear again and comment further on what you have delved into to this point.

Mr. GREEN. Thank you.

Mr. BETTS. Thank you.

Mr. GREEN. Our next witness this morning is a Member of Congress from New Jersey, Congressman Cornelius Gallagher, who has gained a national reputation for his interest in protecting the rights of the people against intrusion by the Government. It is a great pleasure, Congressman Gallagher, to welcome you before this committee this morning.

TESTIMONY OF HON. CORNELIUS E. GALLAGHER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

Mr. GALLAGHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am delighted to have this opportunity to appear once again before this distinguished and highly respected subcommittee. I have always enjoyed testifying in the past and I appreciate the invitation to appear here this morning. I have enjoyed listening this morning to the exchange between this committee and Congressman Betts.

Mr. Chairman, the Federal Government has a definite need to know certain information on its citizens in order to effectively carry out its delegated governmental functions. As much as we might like to return

to the relatively simple governmental existence of 1789, it is impossible. Today's complexity demands information for the Government to make intelligent decisions and to govern responsibly and responsively. Probably the greatest source of personal information for the Government is the decennial census. Every 10 years since 1790, the Federal Government has sought, with increasing detail, specific information on American families from the names of each person to the numbers and kinds of bathroom facilities. The questions themselves and the type of information sought have come under increasing congressional scrutiny in recent years.

I might add here, Mr. Chairman, that this subcommittee has given great service to the American people by carefully screening the questions proposed by the Census Bureau for 1970 and by weeding out those that might tend to put in jeopardy the right of privacy, which we all cherish.

As chairman of the Special Subcommittee on Invasion of Privacy, I have seen and heard of the increasing incursions threatened by the proliferation of personal information held by and available to the Federal Government. Even now, Mr. Chairman, as you know, there is a pending proposal to put all of this personal information held by the Government into one, unified and computerized center-mixed with information by other agencies—a center giving its controllers the maximum access to the almost boundless amounts of information that the Government holds on its citizens and their lives. And I need not point out to this subcommittee that much of that information is irrelevant and, in many cases, downright false. Yet the computer neither forgives nor forgets.

The bill this subcommittee is studying today, introduced by my good friend and able colleague, Congressman Jackson E. Betts, would limit the mandatory categories on the Federal decennial census to seven. Other information would be voluntary with no penalty for refusing to

answer.

Mr. Chairman, this bill would obviously provide a great degree of protection to the individual respondent. By opting to answer specific questions he would give his consent for someone to know that information. By refusing to answer certain questions, the Government would not be given certain information which a respondent, for whatever reason, does not want known.

Mr. Chairman, this is one instance in which I believe that the Government's need to know overcomes the possible intrusions into a citizen's right to privacy. The real question we need to answer, and on which this committee is doing an outstanding job, is what and how much information does the Goverment need to function effectively without an undue intrusion into the personal lives of its citizens. Besides being a population count, the census has come to be a method for collecting and collating information necessary to make the economic and social predictions on which the future planning and policy of our Nation will be based.

For this reason, we cannot predict on the basis of a poll and a very poor poll is what would be the end result of a census system as proposed by this legislation. Response would be greatly uneven. I would predict that the least response would come from those strata of our society who are most in need of being included in our future planning

and whose needs we are not yet even partially aware of. Any voluntariness of census would render all information subject to the vagaries of the poll. As a matter of fact, this type census would not even allow for control of the sample of respondents, rendering it even less valid than the average public opinion poll.

The real issue with which we should now be concerned is not whether response to a question is forced by law, but rather whether the question violates or threatens to violate privacy in the first place and what happens to the information after it is collected. What we need most is to strike a reasonable balance between the information that the Government needs and the lease of power such information will give to the Government to invade the private lives of its citizens.

Where a question clearly requires information that humiliates, degrades or where a question seeks information that intrudes too far into the private life of the respondent, then that question should be deleted from the census because many people will unwittingly answer, giving no thought to the consequences and regardless of any warning appearing on the questionnaire. The simple fact that the question appears on an official form, bearing the imprimatur of the Federal Government, will be enough to coerce many people into feeling that in some way they should answer all of the questions regardless of directions or voluntariness.

The key to the conflict of privacy and the census seems to be that there is a need to screen each and every question. Mr. Chairman, last year, as a direct result of hearings before the subcommittee, at which I was privileged to testify, questions which—a very dangerous requirement in my opinion-pertaining to religious affiliation and requirements to include the social security number of each respondent were deleted on the grounds that the threat to privacy far outweighed the need for that specific information.

Mr. Chairman, it seems to me that the Congress is the best-suited agent of the people to oversee the census, to determine whether any questions unduly infringe upon the right of privacy.

I am presently drawing up legislation to require that, after the Census Bureau has designed a census questionnaire and after all of the questions to be included have been decided, the final version be submitted to the Congress, most appropriately to this subcommittee, for final review. In the event that any question is found to infringe on the right of the respondent to keep certain personal information from the Government, then the committee would have the power to recommend by appropriate legislation that such question be deleted from the census. In effect, I am calling for congressional review of the decennial census.

In addition, it is my belief that criminal sanctions for failure to answer the census are too overpowering. I suggest that penalties be fines rather than jail sentences.

Mr. Chairman, you recently received a letter from Prof. Arthur R. Miller of the University of Michigan Law School concerning this legislation. Professor Miller is a friend of mine and one of the most cerate and knowledgeable critics of the increasing tendency of gov ernment to subvert the rights of the individual. He was kind enough to send me a copy of his letter, and I would like to quote one short passage. He says

The constant magnification of governmental information collection and dissemination all contribute to the debilitation of an American's right to be let alone. Rather than focusing on ways to stem or reverse this tide, all too many Federal and State officials are advancing proposals that will maintain and intensify it.

I could not agree more with Professor Miller, and I think that congressional review of the census along with a decrease in penalty will at least stem the tide.

The Federal Government, State, and local governments, industry and private individuals now hold tremendous amounts of information on citizens and groups of citizens. There is an ever-increasing pressure on the information gatherers to get more and better information. There is an ever-expanding technical ability to gather and make better use of information. The computer will have-indeed is having-a tremendous impact on the ability of man to gather, manage, and utilize to the full extent information on any subject. The tremendous input of information from quasi-legitimate sources such as credit bureaus and employment agencies is multiplying at a frightening rate. Covert information gathering by wiretapping and the sophisticated electronic eavesdropping equipment is gaining in frightening proportions both by the private and the governmental sector.

I might say, to point up the danger of all this, just recently at a seminar I heard someone express the thought that since low-cost housing presents so many problems, perhaps the best way to get a meaningful study would be to insert a bug in each apartment, a bug that could be placed in the structure, such as, you recall, the bug placed in the construction of the American Embassy in Moscow. Just consider the implications of that. Of course, it was all done not to harass people, but the suggestion was made this would be the best way we could study how people live in low-cost housing and the best way to escalate them up into the next stratum of society.

Fortunately for the private individual, this information for the most part is separated and uncoordinated. Much of it is protected by strict existing safeguards. I might point out that the Census Bureau has one of the finest records of protecting the information it receives. As you know, there is presently a great amount of pressure to mix this information with agencies that do not have very good records in this field. But much of the information is open to all who wish to thumb through it. Many holders of information of individuals are unrestricted in disclosure I might say, too, there are restrictions imposed upon people who seek this information, not the information concerning the individual-either legally or through lack of proper supervision and informality.

On this point I might say that there is a tremendous exchange of confidential information under the heading of the "buddy" system in governmental agencies. While it might be confidential by law, there is an exchange of information at the various levels of government. I might say here, too, that this does not apply to the Census Bureau. As a result of this fantastic supply of information, the greatest threat that confronts the American people as individuals and as a Nation is the proposal to collate, coordinate, and combine this information within one single computerized system. Congressman Betts, I note, referred to this on page 12677 of the Congressional Record, where he states that we should make better use of the information