Thread by @darkassin

People have been minimizing Trump's Executive Order to share data from other government agencies with the Department of Commerce. It’s garbage because of the nature of data, and dangerous in its implications. Here’s why: 1/x

Government data is almost by its very nature incomplete. At the very least, it is collected and processed in ways that can make it incompatible with other systems. Think about what happens when someone changes their name. 2/x

It’s not just a simple process. You have to have the initiating act (court decree, marriage). Then you have to change everything. Your driver’s license, social security record, passport, USCIS, birth certificate, insurance…all in separate stages that cost time and money 3/X

I changed my name in 2015. I still have things in my old name. Even just changing the bare minimum—the US government stuff—took months, and I had relatively few documents to update AFAIK. It’s easy to miss one, especially if you have many 4/x

It’s also not uncommon for data to be incorrect. My partner just went to renew his IL driver’s license. His last name was spelled wrong in their system. He had no idea, because it was correct on his license. He was asked if he was sure he knew his last name. 5/x

Data also just gets lost. My mom emigrated in 1960, was naturalized in ’72. When she went to apply for social security, they didn’t think she was a citizen. The record was just lost. She had to come in with her original paperwork to fix it 6/x

I would not be surprised if there’s still a system that thinks that I’m still Mrs. McCoy, that my partner’s last name has an extra ‘w’ in it, or that my mom isn’t a U.S. Citizen. And that’s just names. Think of all the other information that can change 7/x

Addresses, phone numbers, places of employment, education, gender, medical records, social services records, criminal records. The first two especially change constantly, particularly for people/families in precarious situations 8/x

The idea that all the information that the government has in every system about its citizens is accurate is laughable. And then, beyond that…these are all different systems with different ways of storing data, different fields, differing standards of proof 9/x

I worked in the insurance industry for several years. Transferring personal records from one system to another was a nightmare, and that was with a relatively small number of people. Names were stored in different fashions, exported in different ways 10/x

Is it Robert Todd Lincoln or Lincoln, Robert Todd or Lincoln, Robert T.? Are middle names in the same field as first names or do they have their own field? Is it Rob instead of Robert? 11/x

(FYI: I think part of the reason for my mom’s situation is because her first name *was* Marie, just like almost all French-Canadian women at the time. It was never used and she changed it upon naturalization, but who knows how that was recorded?) 12/x

The same goes for addresses and phone numbers. Are they stored in ways that are compatible? Can they easily transition from one system to the next without error? Will fields get lost or dropped? Will we end up with two records for the same person? 13/x

Based on my experience, errors are guaranteed to occur. Particularly when—and this is crucial—the data being gathered has an emphasis on a particular point. For instance, when it’s gathered with the intent of being used with census data 14/x

Now, the census’s purpose, so far as I understand it, is to see who’s living where for the purpose of representation. Historically speaking that has included non-citizens of all immigration statuses. Places need representation based on who’s there 15/x

On the surface, knowing the number of non-citizens could be helpful in terms of knowing where to provide services. But that isn’t the point of this. The ostensible point of this is to know where non-citizens are for “safety” reasons 16/x

The actual reason is to dissuade turnout through fear and in doing so deflate the representational power of areas with large non-citizen populations. Which has never been how the census has been meant to work. 17/x

An EO to collate data into Department of Commerce records is still a dissuading tactic. The DoC is still where census data goes. The implication is that all data will be added to the census data to “determine” who is and isn’t a citizen and where they live 18/x

This still depresses turnout due to its implications. People know what’s implied by, “we’ll send the data to the Department of Commerce.” And people will act accordingly, possibly even if they emigrated legally, for fear of being screwed over by bad data and sent to a camp 19/x

Moreover, if the administration actually gets it into their head to do it, it will be a logistical nightmare for potentially everyone who’s ever emigrated to the US. Even people who share a name w/someone who has, just like the no-fly list 20/x

Because data is dirty. Records are outdated. And the actual collating of the data into one database will probably be either impossible or very shoddily done, and without the benefit of being able to straighten things out without potentially putting one's self in danger 21/x

And, since the question and this EO have already been publicized, the damage is already done. Turnout is already likely to be suppressed. This has abject political goals, which have been extensively covered elsewhere and ruled on in the courts 22/x

So, in summary: you can’t trust dirty data to tell you who’s a citizen and who’s not, and this is all absolutely unnecessary unless your goal is to depress census numbers in areas with vulnerable populations, which goes against the point of the census 23/x

In closing, #abolishICE, #chingalamigra, and remember that data is usually gathered with all the finesse of a four year-old collecting rocks on the playground. And you don't see many papers published by four year-old geologists. 24/24