[lostlogin]

This is so awful. I once got randomly selected to be a survey participant by a government agency while I was building a path. It was on the effect on my life of an earthquake thousands of kilometres away (there wasn’t any). They claimed I was legally obliged to participate or would be prosecuted. ID was produced etc. He sat and fired random questions at me while I broke concrete with a sledgehammer for an hour. I’d give the shotest possible answer, because I was breathless and the time between swings wasn’t long. Then they did follow up calls once every week for a year at the same time each week. These were were never answered and the messages were not returned. I have no idea why your story reminded me of this, but it triggered the same rage centre.

[jandrese]

Unless that was the census I would be extremely dubious of "you must take this survey or go to jail, trust me I'm from the government".

[lostlogin]

It was The Ministry of Statistics census people doing some work post the Christchurch earthquake.