The fact this is happening more and more of late is an indication either the Australian Bureau of Statistics has done a silly thing by deciding to hang on to people's personal details following the 2016 Census or that it has failed to clearly explain its reasons for doing this.

Either way, when people like the former deputy privacy commissioner of NSW say they won't be complying with the request for identification the organisation has a problem.

Australians have long been sceptical about the good intentions of government and are always on the alert for any signs of overreach.

This has manifested itself in many different ways that range from the outright insurrection of the Eureka Stockade in 1854 to vocal opposition to the Hawke government's Australia Card proposal in the mid-1980s.

An even more recent example was the negative reaction to the data retention legislation originally conceived by the Gillard government and then implemented under Tony Abbott last year.

Those laws, which took effect in October, give the government the power to track every phone call, text message and email in the country as part of the war on terrorism, and appear to have even greater reach than what the ABS has said it is going to do.

The ABS plan is to retain the name and address data provided by respondents for four years in order to create "linkage keys". These can be used to link personal details provided in the census response with information from other sources such as other surveys, health, criminal, traffic and education records.

High-profile politicians, including Nick Xenophon and Sarah Hanson-Young, have said this is going too far and that they will not be providing their names in their census returns despite the $180 dollar a day penalty [capped at $1800] they could incur.

Anna Johnston, the former deputy privacy commissioner for NSW, has gone further, saying she will not be filling in the census at all.

Ms Johnston, who now works as a privacy consultant, argued that the use of the linkage keys would allow the government to collate information on individuals they would likely refuse to provide if they were asked to do so. "If we, as patients, were asked for our identifiable health data directly, we would refuse to answer," she said.

The real cause for concern is that the census, an exercise in community co-operation that plays a crucial role in allowing the nation to plan for its collective future, has become embroiled in an argument over whether or not the ABS has cast itself as "Big Brother" in the Orwellian sense of the word.

Since the first national census was held in 1911, the ABS and its forebears have built up an impressive store of trust and credibility.

It will be unfortunate if, as a result of an attempt to move the process into the 21st century, this is lost.