# Special Sworn Status **Special Sworn Status** is the legal device by which a person who does not work for the [[Census Bureau]] is placed inside the Bureau's confidentiality obligations so they may handle confidential data. It is the gate on the top rung of the [[Census Data Access Crosswalk]]. Obtaining it requires a **background investigation** and **fingerprinting**, and it is granted only after a project has already been approved through the [[Standard Application Process]] — the two tracks run in sequence, not in parallel, which adds **three to four months** to a timeline that already includes up to twelve weeks of project review. Applicants must have been **U.S. residents for 36 of the past 60 months** and must remain resident for the duration of the project: a nationality-adjacent filter on who may study American statistical data, imposed administratively rather than by statute. The substance of the status is the oath. A specially sworn person takes the same lifetime nondisclosure oath as Bureau staff and comes inside **13 U.S.C. § 214** — five years' imprisonment for wrongful disclosure, with the practical maximum fine set by 18 U.S.C. § 3571 at $250,000. The obligation does not end when the project ends. See [[Title 13]] · [[Federal Statistical Research Data Centers]] · [[Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act]]