Mr. ROSENTHAL. The only thought that I have, Mr. Chairman-I concur fully in everything that you have said, and I want to commend the chairman for taking a prodigious leap forward in this special inquiry. I want to specifically commend the members of the Peace Corps who, in my judgment, have entertained a rather enlightened view about the whole subject-certainly more enlightened than other witnesses from other Federal agencies we have had. What I worry about constantly is not only the question of invasion of privacy, but the fact that we are getting a mechanical society, that we are trying to make everybody some deviant from the norm, that we are trying to push the whole mass of the American public into a funnel, push them all into the wide end of the funnel and have them come out pretty much the same from the narrow end of the funnel. I doubt if this is really what any of us-obviously neither you nor I want this. As President Kennedy said, we ought to make this world safe for diversity. I think this applies to our domestic society as well. So that these tests that relate little differences from the norm kind of scare me, and I hope we don't develop a mechanical kind of society where you are going to push a button and a man is going to respond in some way that you have already predicted in advance and that if he does not he won't be chosen for an important role in our society. Dr. CARP. We certainly share your concern, and there are many debates and discussions of this in the Peace Corps. We have been criticized, I think unfairly, internally for producing in our jargon the bland volunteer. So we are now making a special effort to insure that the widest variety of individual differences can, in fact, succeed or have a chance to succeed in the Peace Corps. Again, in our own jargon, here we talk about the high-risk, high-gain individual. And this is the one that we are looking for. We are not looking for the mediocre or the norm. I think Mr. Berlew has had more contact with this particular concept and may want to add a few remarks of his own. Mr. BERLEW. I just wanted to say that anyone who has had the opportunity of dealing with 300 volunteers overseas would not be too concerned about their conforming to any norm. I mean that quite seriously. It is a very interesting and very enlightening experience. But it is not a normal type of experience. Mr. ROSENTHAL. You see when we originally started, we acknowledged, all of us, that the Federal Government really sets the tone for society. If the Federal Government permits incursions and invasions into privacy, all the other organizations, commercial organizations, are going to think this is a standard that they can follow. So that we have an additional responsibility, beyond efficiency within the immediate organization, which is to set this tone or standard of constitutional preservation, this deep dedication we have to the Constitution. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. GALLAGHER. Thank you, Mr. Rosenthal. It may well be that if some of the campuses do run out of programs to protest, this might be a good start for another march. [Laughter.] Dr. CARP. We understand there were pickets marching outside the American Psychological Association Building. Laughter.] Mr. GALLAGHER. I am glad that the rippling effect of the subcommittee is streaming in the right direction. [Laughter.] (The following article later appeared in the New York Times.) [From the New York Times, Sept. 5, 1965] PEACE CORPS PSYCHIATRIC TESTS CALLED ESSENTIALLY IRRELEVANT (By Natalie Jaffe) CHICAGO, September 4.-Psychiatric evaluations of the mental health of Peace Corps volunteers were found to be essentially irrelevant in predicting the young teachers' actual performance in Africa. The American Psychological Association, at its 73d annual meeting here, heard Dr. M. Brewster Smith of the University of California outline today his studies of the first group of Peace Corps teachers in Ghana. Dr. Smith said the mental health stereotype of the sociable, self-confident, well-rounded, well-adjusted Peace Corps worker may have to be abandoned as a measure of competence in favor of more sensitive judgments of commitment and interest. "The current preoccupation with identifying the disturbed puts to singleminded an emphasis on one set of liabilities without attending to assets appropriate to a job," he said. EARLY ASSESSMENT "So long as the volunteers were competent teachers and interested in Africa, their quirks didn't matter," Dr. Smith said in an interview after his address. He based his address on a study of 45 volunteers, both before and after their 2 years of teaching in Ghana, conducted under a contract with the Peace Corps. Dr. Smith, a psychologist, is a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Berkeley, and a special research fellow of the National Institute of Mental Health. While the volunteers were in training at Berkeley, each was seen in two 50minute interviews by seven, psychiatrists from the Langley-Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute. On one of the predictions they made, called psychological effectiveness, high ratings were given to "the optimally adjusted personality as viewed by clinical psychologists-what amounts to a mental health stereotype," Dr. Smith said. INTERVIEWS IN GHANA After the volunteers had been in Africa for a year, Dr. Smith and an associate Dr. Raphael S. Ezekiel of the University of Michigan, went to Ghana and held long, informal interviews with the young teachers at their schools. The psychologists made another trip at the end of the second year. Both sets of interviews were recorded. In the interviews, the volunteers discussed their jobs and how they felt about themselves and Ghana. Back at Berkeley, Dr. Smith's research teams analyzed the interviews and broke them down into components-65 describing personal attitudes and 64 describing performance inside the classroom and out. These components were subsequently rated by 12 advance graduate students in psychology who had never met the young teachers. "The psychiatrists' mental health ratings had a close to zero correlation with our criterion measures of competent performance," Dr. Smith reported. TEST DISCREPANCIES He said he found the discrepancies "not surprising, in view of the psychiatrist's professional training, their responsibility for weeding out disqualifying pathology, and their essential ignorance of the situations the volunteers faced." No one, even in the Peace Corps administration, he added, knew exactly what was in store for the volunteers when the program first began. He emphasized that since the final evaluations were based mainly on interviews with the volunteers themselves, the comparisons of prediction and performance could be challenged for their objectivity. But Dr. Smith said he was "well satisfied" with the honesty and informality of the interviews. As an example of "one splendidly successful volunteer," Dr. Smith described one young man who failed to impress anyone at Berkeley. "He was quiet, a loner, not interested in girls and socially awkward. But he got to Ghana and discovered he had a vocation for teaching," the psychologist noted. "The experience even carried over," Dr. Smith added. "He's now working in a special field of education here and is very effective. What we had missed was his readiness for commitment. It doesn't matter that he isn't hail fellow well met." Mr. GALLAGHER. The subcommittee stands adjourned, subject to the call of the Chair. (Whereupon, at 3:50 p.m. the subcommittee adjourned, to reconvene subject to call of the Chair.) SPECIAL INQUIRY ON INVASION OF PRIVACY WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23, 1965 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SPECIAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON INVASION OF PRIVACY Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:15 p.m., in room 2203, Rayburn Office Building, Hon. Cornelius E. Gallagher (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Cornelius E. Gallagher, Benjamin S. Rosenthal, and Frank J. Horton. Staff members present: Norman G. Cornish, chief of special inquiry; Miles Q. Romney, associate counsel, Government Operations Committee; and Raymond T. Collins, minority professional counsel. Mr. GALLAGHER. The subcommittee will come to order. I am authorized by my two colleagues, who are tied up on the floor and will join me, to start our hearing in the interest of time, and the fact that we have some distinguished witnesses here today whom we do not wish to detain longer than necessary. The Chair has a brief statement that he would like to make at the outset. This hearing is a continuation of a special inquiry under the House Committee on Government Operations into the subject of invasion of privacy as it is related to the efficiency and economy of certain Federal investigative and data-gathering activities. Today we will take a look at the 1964 Census of Agriculture, especially that section which requires farmers, under penalty of law, to answer detailed questions about their outside income and provide the same information for all persons living in the farmhouse. Prior agricultural censuses have not asked for such information, although less detailed information on personal income has been sampled in the regular census covering the general population. The committee's interest in this subject dates back several months. Last year, it received a complaint from a Pennsylvania farmer who objected to a new section of the farm census questionnaire because it sought information on the outside income of everyone living in the same house as the farm operator. The farmer who wrote the subcommittee said he thought questions about farm income were proper, but details about his outside income constituted an invasion of privacy in his view. Section 11 of the 1964 Census of Agriculture, which was sent to a 20-percent sample of all farm operators plus operators of all farms of 1,000 acres or more, asked for the following information regarding each person 10 years of age or older living in the farmhouse: 1. The total wages or salary, commissions, and tips from all jobs off the farm before taxes and deductions. 2. Total income from any nonfarm business or professional practice after business expenses. 3. The total of all social security payments, pensions, veterans' payments, unemployment compensation and welfare payments. 4. The total of all rent for farm and nonfarm property, interest, dividends, soil bank payments, oil lease, and miscellaneous income from other sources. In addition to information about income, the farm operator also had to provide the ages, the amount of education, and the number of days worked off the farm for all persons living in the farmhouse. Presumably, if he did not know the answers from his own knowledge, he had to ask the persons involved to give him the information. I am sure that many persons would not object to this. On the other hand, I am equally certain there are persons who would. Privacy is a relative thing. Each person makes his own decision as to what personal information he will share with another; and, as we all know, this varies greatly, depending on the relationship of others and the circumstances in which the information is sought and given. In my opening statement at the start of this special inquiry early this month, I expressed the hope that the Federal Government would take the lead in helping to protect the right of each individual to decide himself what he wants to keep private. Ordinarily, he should not be put in a position of being forced to give information which may be no one's business other than himself. Moreover, there is the important question whether the Government should, as a matter of policy, ask others to invade the privacy of individuals even though the information may be valuable and necessary to the Government. It is usually possible to ask the person directly involved, instead of someone else. Procedures could presumably be worked out to insure and facilitate this. They could make it crystal clear that if any person living in the farmhouse objects to giving the farm operator the information, he would be welcome to file it separately and away from the eyes of others. The Pennsylvania farmer who complained to the subcommittee also indicated he felt the detailed information sought on outside income was beyond the needs of the farm census. This, I am sure, is a debatable question, but should be given consideration. Perhaps the Government could well do without these details and content itself with a total figure for outside income alone. Perhaps not. Our inquiry is trying to emphasize that the Government should weigh the need for information against protecting the right to privacy. This is a delicate balance sometimes. But the measure should be taken, deliberately and consciously. To discuss these questions, the special inquiry has invited leading officials of the Bureau of the Census, the Department of Agriculture, and the Bureau of the Budget. We welcome them and hope, that by working together, we can perhaps do more to preserve the right to privacy without detriment to the legitimate needs of the Government for information. Now the Chair would like to call, and ask that they testify together, Mr. A. Ross Eckler, Acting Director, Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce; Mr. C. Kyle Randall, Chief of the Farm Income Branch, Economic Research Service, Department of Agriculture; and Conrad Taeuber, Assistant Director, Bureau of the Census. Í would also like to insert in the record at this point the text of section. 11 of the 1964 Census of Agriculture questionnaire: I |