The article is complaining about the misuse of census data that isn’t covered by appropriate privacy laws in order to make a larger point about the need for such laws to protect other data, such as that posted thoughtlessly on the Internet.
You correctly noted that one of these is currently in place for individual U.S. census data (which was not the case Germany in 1939). My point was that fascists, especially those who want to profile respondents by ethnicity or citizenship status, find ways around such laws if they don’t sweep them aside entirely.
