Apparently the 2011 UK census will be run by a private company, and one of the two leading bidders for the contract is the US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin. There are various reasons why I find this objectionable:

• Perhaps the least of them: the company manufactures arms. I am not a lover of arms manufacturers, but perhaps they should be encouraged to branch out into peaceful activities like running censuses.
• This is a foreign company and should not be given access to sensitive information about British citizens.
• “They also focus on intelligence and surveillance work and boast of their ability to provide ‘integrated threat information’ that combines information from many different sources. … This [census] information would be very useful to Lockheed Martin’s intelligence work”.
• The choice of Lockheed Martin could compromise the usefulness of the census, because “fears that the data might not be safe could lead to many people not filling in their Census forms.”

The last two points are taken from this post, which also explains what action you can take if, like me, you wish to express your objection to this.

But then I would not want to suggest that the UK government itself runs the census, given its continuing appalling track record on protection of confidential personal data.

Thanks to Pam for drawing this to my attention.