Awesome Search String, it made my day

I have to say, that this is the most awesome search string I have seen yet! Even more amazing is it’s from Califoniastan!

Whoever this is, please note, you put one hell of a smile on my face. Have a wonderful day.

Location   
Continent  :  North America
Country  :  United States  (Facts)
State  :  California
City  :  Thousand Oaks
Lat/Long  :  34.2049, -118.8494 (Map)
Distance  :  875 miles
Language    English (U.S.)
en-us
Operating System    Macintosh MacOSX
Browser    Safari 1.3
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10_5_8; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.22.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Safari/531.22.7
Javascript    version 1.5
Monitor   
Resolution  :  1280 x 854
Color Depth  :  24 bits
Time of Visit    May 30 2010 6:36:00 am
Last Page View    May 30 2010 6:37:42 am
Visit Length    1 minute 42 seconds
Page Views    3
Referring URL   http://www.google.co…ug&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Search Engine   google.com
Search Words   jack booted census thug
Visit Entry Page    http://www.the-minut….org/taxonomy/term/5
Visit Exit Page    http://www.the-minut….org/taxonomy/term/5

This is extremely WRONG

I came across something this morning saying that Census workers can enter your household in your absence with the permission of the landlord.

What many Americans don’t realize, is that census workers — from the head of the Bureau and the Secretary of Commerce (its parent agency) down to the lowliest and newest Census employee — are empowered under federal law to actually demand access to any apartment or any other type of home or room that is rented out, in order to count persons in the abode and for “the collection of statistics.” If the landlord of such apartment or other leased premises refuses to grant the government worker access to your living quarters, whether you are present or not, the landlord can be fined $500.00.

What I find interesting is there’s a couple problems here. In Washington at least the Landlord Tenant act says the landlord may not enter the premises without 48 hours advanced notification. Further the census website says the following:

Note that the census taker will never ask to enter your home

That is straight off the website verbatim. If you have had a landlord allow a census worker into your home I highly suggest you contact an attorney immediately as well as conduct an audit of all valuables and identity information. Census workers are NOT to be allowed in homes to conduct survey information. It is a violation of the 4th amendment as is constitutes a search by a government entity. Many states have similar laws to Washington’s Landlord Tenant Act. If you are a landlord and allowed someone claiming to be from the census into a property, contact your tenant and law enforcement immediately.

The bottom line is that census takers are only allowed to question people. If you fail to respond they can ask your landlord how many people are residing in the residence. No entry is allowed or is necessary. All information can be acquired from neighbors that is necessary for the Census. Again, my suggestion to landlords or tenants that have been affected by this is to contact an attorney immediately. FYI for landlord, come clean and contact law enforcement and an attorney, your tenant can probably put you into oblivion in civil suits. You can probably make a case that is was due to duress of someone pretending to be acting from the government. If you fail to come clean after reading this, it’s on you. Census.gov even states they are not to enter the premises.

Anyone desiring access to a residence should be assumed to NOT be a census worker but someone looking for stuff to steal. Your condition meter should transition to “Orange” immediately upon someone approaching and asking; claims to authority or not. As my dad always said, “Challenge Everything.”

UPDATE:

Had a question come through, landlords must provide access to non-living spaces where privacy is not expected. A prime example of this is a gated community or an apartment building where the front door is locked but there are common hallways. Basically a way to look at it is they are exempt from efforts to keep solicitors out. Access is to be allowed to the entrance of the residence. The full law is as follows:

Whoever, being the owner, proprietor, manager, superintendent, or
agent of any hotel, apartment house, boarding or lodging house,
tenement, or other building, refuses or willfully neglects, when
requested by the Secretary or by any other officer or employee of
the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof, acting
under the instructions of the Secretary, to furnish the names of
the occupants of such premises, or to give free ingress thereto and
egress therefrom to any duly accredited representative of such
Department or bureau or agency thereof, so as to permit the
collection of statistics with respect to any census provided for in
subchapters I and II of chapter 5 of this title, or any survey
authorized by subchapter IV or V of such chapter insofar as such
survey relates to any of the subjects for which censuses are
provided by such subchapters I and II, including, when relevant to
the census or survey being taken or made, the proper and correct
enumeration of all persons having their usual place of abode in
such premises, shall be fined not more than $500.

To surmise it, as I did above for landlords, provide the number of occupants or allow them to go door to door. Do not allow them into private living spaces.

This should not be happening

Yet it is. The 2010 Census is currently ongoing with workers now going door to door.

There are about 635,000 U.S. Census workers currently going door to door counting Americans who did not return their surveys.

One thing many people did not expect was a lack of screening and fingerprinting for potential Census Workers. One Census Worker managed to get hired using an alias despite being a registered sex offender.

A census official told the Inquirer that a “Jamie Shepard” had been hired in late April after passing the name check, but was fired May 5, as he failed the fingerprint check.

He was hired before a full check was completed.

Another incident involved rape and burglary. This census worker was using his job to stake out potential victims.

One of the victims was a 21 year-old physically handicapped woman.

He got caught and in a very stupid manner.

The attacker left his blue jeans, T-shirt, underwear, boots and wallet with his driver’s license in the woman’s bedroom, authorities said.

The same article tells of a completely different incident, still involving Census Workers in Texas. Three men posing as census workers broke into a home, tied three of the victims up and ambushed the fourth when he got home, killing him in the process.

All of these incidents combined indicate how lost our government is and the amazing number of sheep who believe things like the following will help.

How do I know that census takers aren’t criminals? What was the screening process for job applicants?

The U.S. Census Bureau has made the screening process for employees more rigorous than in any previous census. Each applicant is required to accurately disclose information about any conviction, imprisonment, probation, or parole in the last 10 years. All census takers must undergo both an FBI name check and an FBI fingerprint check. We disqualify any applicant whose screening indicates prior convictions or a pending charge for certain categories of crimes, such as murder, sex offenses, robbery, voter fraud, or other crimes that suggest a threat to safety or the integrity of census data.

Obviously the law, in this case, doesn’t stop criminals. Also, they only disqualify applicants based on their background check, but what do they do for those who lied about their background? This seems to be just more lip service, like the TSA, to make people feel safe.

A final note on dealing with the census in particular (but a good habit when dealing with people claiming to be government officials):

If a census worker comes to the door, be sure to be in Condition Orange during the entire visit. Do not allow them into your home. If they asked to come in, notify the authorities immediately. Also, watch out for anyone else that maybe around helping the worker and presume the worker and anyone else to be a potential threat unless you actually know them. Give them only the constitutionally required information
(i.e. how many live there). Do not provide names, birth dates, races, etc for those in residence.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that no one is out to get you, better alert than dead.

~TMW~