In that general sense I could have done it with public data for Lemkos, Furs, and Andorrans as well as Arab ancestries. At least, I could do it at the 3-digit zip level (or higher). Now, I do think the 5 digit zip could level data would have been missing for most disaggregated ancestries, so they could have gave them some extra info but the data that is missing is of really small populations which should not be helpful to customs anyway. If the zip had 1000 oir more people of "Arab" ancestries than that would have been public info already.
It is bad symbolic politics but we should not forget they could have easily paid some temp to get the same info. That is, let us not bad mouth the Census for the bad policy of Customs. The actions of the Census in WWII were bad but this does not appear to rise to that level.
What also sucks is that the government gets criticized for simply shufflin public information this way but private firms that couple the Census with other data sets can do it with little to know criticism. I think I mentioned this on this list a while ago but I was amazed at the info a friend of mine who worked at a relatively small "private" research firm had on people (they had all kinds of medical info and they were using it to help hospitals and pharma companies with marketing).
Jim
"It's not what you look like when you're doing what you're doing, it's what you're doing when you're doing what you look like you're doing."
--Charles Day
Quoting Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>:
> [This really sucks.]
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/30/politics/30census.html
>
> WASHINGTON, July 29 - The Census Bureau has provided specially
> tabulated population statistics on Arab-Americans to the Department of
> Homeland Security, including detailed information on how many people of
> Arab backgrounds live in certain ZIP codes.
>
> The assistance is legal, but civil liberties groups and Arab-American
> advocacy organizations say it is a dangerous breach of public trust and
> liken it to the Census Bureau's compilation of similar information
> about Japanese-Americans during World War II.