13 U.S.C. § 9 — Information as confidential; exception

(a) The Secretary and every other officer or employee of the Department of Commerce, its bureaus or agencies, and local government census liaisons, must keep census information confidential. This rule has exceptions listed in section 8, section 16, chapter 10 of this title, section 210 of a 1998 appropriations act, and section 2(f) of the Census of Agriculture Act of 1997. Except under those listed exceptions, these officials may not: (1) use information from this title for anything besides the statistical purpose it was collected for; (2) publish anything that would let someone identify the data of a particular business or individual; or (3) let anyone besides sworn officers and employees of the Department or its bureaus examine individual reports. No government department, bureau, agency, officer, or employee may demand copies of census reports that a business or individual has kept, except the Secretary acting to carry out this title. Those retained copies cannot be legally compelled, cannot be used as evidence, and cannot be used for any purpose in a court or administrative proceeding, unless the individual or business agrees. (b) The confidentiality rules in subsection (a) do not apply to censuses of governments, described in subchapter III of chapter 5 of this title. They also do not apply to the interim current data on those same government-census subjects, described in subchapter IV of chapter 5, as long as that information comes from -- or is normally found in -- public records.