Thread by @LassieResists

1) My background is math, and I used to build predictive statistical models. I want to throw up a ⚠️red flag⚠️about what the administration just proposed for a work-around of the #citizenshipquestion for #Census2020

First, this is what D.trUMP said today at the White House...

2) In a nutshell, they want to gather vast amounts of federal data so that they can determine (or in some cases, guess) whether someone is a US citizen or not

This federal data, once merged w/ the census data, would be a very powerful tool that could be weaponized, like in 2016

3) They're asking for data from "every department and agency in the federal government"

This includes:
INS
SSA
IRS
HHS
VA
DOJ
HUD
Dept of Education

The big questions are;
What data is "legally accessible"?
Will the federal agencies cooperate?

4) They want "all legally accessible records," and I first want to clarify that in simplest terms:

"a record" = data about a person, which includes one or more key field(s) that uniquely identifies that person

5) If these key fields align well across agencies, the resulting merged data might be accurate

But I highly doubt this will be the case. Merging data from so many different systems is likely to be a data nightmare, resulting in inaccurate data, similar to Credit Bureau data

6) If this administration succeeds, they will have a centralized data set that contains everything the Commerce Department can get their hands on (by threatening EVERY federal department and agency).

Alone this prospect is scary, but consider the other data out there...

7) One would assume the large data set built by Cambridge Analytica from "stolen" Facebook data (and voter records) is still floating around, and has been updated and maintained by someone connected to the administration.

This data was their secret weapon in 2016.

8) If this hypothetical federal data set was merged with the census data, and then combined with the social medial & voter profiles built by CA, that would be a MEGA data set that could be used to accurately predict how people will behave and how best to influence their behavior.

9) I believe someone in the administration saw an opportunity to get out of the citizenship question, and get something they always want - DATA.

These days, data is power, and we need #Resist any attempt to gather federal data to be used for political purposes.

10) Finally, I just want to state explicitly that data is power for the #resistance as well. Our power lies in our numbers, which is why we need to make sure everyone gets counted in the #Census2020