It’s amazing how, when strung together, ten words that are innocuous on their own can form such a terrifying phrase. No, not that one; that one is only eight (and mind out of the gutter, you!). The phrase I’m talking about is a classic that is probably as old as human civilization: I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.
About two weeks ago we got a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services addressed to “Resident” and given the problems we’ve been having in DC with elevated lead levels in drinking water I opened it. According to the enclosed form letter our address was “randomly selected” for participation in a rolling survey done by RTI for HHS asking about
- tobacco, alcohol, and drug use or non-use
- knowledge and attitudes about drugs
- mental health, and
- other health issues
An interviewer would be around, the letter said, in about a week to determine if anyone in the household qualified for the survey and, if so, back a week after that to administer the questions which would only take an hour and for which each participant would be paid $30 in cash. Participation was strictly voluntary and any survey answers would be kept strictly confidential as the interviewer would never ask a participant’s name.
I was, unfortunately, not the person who answered the door when the interviewer came around to do the initial assessment.
Yes, you heard that correctly: The Girlfriend volunteered us, not just herself but us, for an “anonymous” government sponsored survey about illegal activities and mental status.
The survey questions themselves were about what you’d expect from a government survey on illegal drug use: what have you taken ever in these given categories, in the past year from today, in the last 30 days? How often have you missed work because of fill-in-the-blank use? How often have you suffered from fill-in-the-blank with condition currently advertised by BigPharma as easily curable? And on, and on, and on.
So I answered the questions and got my $30 in cash and then came the catch: the follow-up assessment form. Mostly this form is a check on the interviewer to make sure that the person is, in fact, giving out the money and not keeping it for herself, but this form wants my phone number and my address.
It also has my interview number on it.
I asked the interviewer, pray tell, how I was to be assured that my answers would stay confidential if my case number was associated with my phone number which is linked to my name and address as a matter of public record. I got a standard response about this just being a quality check.
Later, when I asked The Girlfriend, who is more than passing bright, the same question she said “Why would they bother to do that?”
Perhaps I’m paranoid but in this day and age, where a government agency as been specifically forbidden by Congress from collecting personal data on airline passengers, and has publicly said it would not and then goes around and collects that data anyway, don’t I have a right to be paranoid? I mean, have these people not heard of Bigfoot.com, or Dogpile.com? Have these people not heard of databases and brokers, and of hackers?
I suppose I could have lied, but why spend the time then? I guess it just boils down to whether or not you trust the government. And I don’t.
Dear survey respondent #314,159,265:
The information you provided to our interviewer on 7/9/2005 at your home on 200 Elm Street, does not agree with the information provided to us from http://www.zabasearch.com
Also, your book, “Nowhere to Hide” by Robert O’Harrow (ISBN 0743254805) is due at the Fairfax County Public Library. Your interviewer will be by on Tuesday morning, before you go to work, to correct the information. Compliance is appreciated.
When contacting HHS technical support, please provide your survey respondent number. As part of our security protocols designed to protect your privacy, you will be asked to confirm your address, mother’s maiden name, social security number, employer, and income.
Department of HHD
p.s. Your car’s right, front tire is low on air.
Actually, the taking of info to ensure the interviewer did not take the money is probably not a part of the contracted procedure to interview you. I bet that’s the way the contractor checks to make sure their staff are doing their job. I bet that information doesn’t make it to HHS.
As someone who works in the government environment, often its the contractors who collect and amass all this information for the government. I would be afraid of what the contractor is doing with the info.
Dropped by via Blog Active. I thought your comments there were so on the money. Thank you for expressing your views so clearly.
Holy s-you-know-what – I am stunned. Did you by chance refuse the follow up assessment, hand back the $30, and tear the questionaire to shreds? I hope?
I like your GF – sight-unseen as it were – after all, she likes you, so that’s in her favor. But she definitely could use a few doses of paranoia.
Do you think New Yorkers – even ex-New Yorkers – are more paranoid than anyone else? I would have laughed my head off at this interviewer. Naive in the extreme to expect people to answer such questions with either honesty or accuracy – one could play some little games perhaps.
But – I must confess – I really am paranoid – long had the habit of covering my face quite casually whenever I saw someone on the street with a camera (tho it’s the ones you don’t see……) I was careful at times of what I said on the phone – but I came to adulthood during the Vietnam war years and belonged to several questionable (but honorable) groups – everyone talked about whether or not their phones were tapped. I knew real live radicals. All that leaves an indelible impression.