Another privacy concern raised by allowing the Census Bureau to distribute its address lists is that the Bureau could become the beginnings of a de facto, centrally-controlled databank of personal information. The ACLU believes that it would be only a matter of time before other personal information is similarly coordinated and distributed. Thus, the government would able to create lifetime, centrally-controlled personal dossiers, a first step towards information totalitarianism. In addition to the grave privacy concerns of releasing census address lists, the Census Bureau's tradition of confidentiality would be broken. This could have a drastic impact upon the public's perception of the taking of the census, and thereby on the accuracy of the census.
People are concerned about privacy issues.
The 1993 annual Louis Harris survey showed that 83 percent of those polled expressed concern over threats to personal privacy. If the public recognizes that their right to control information about themselves within the system is weak, the individual's autonomy, individuality, self-determination, and liberty are all at risk. They are less likely to provide information for the census. The government discovered some of the risks of this during the 1990 census. People did not want to answer the intrusive questions regarding pregnancy and mental illness.