Open Access to Public Records: A Genealogical Perspective

The Records Preservation and Access Committee (RPAC), a joint committee of the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the National Genealogical Society, has published a White Paper dealing with access to vital records.

In a post-9/11 world, the requirements of open access to records and information often conflicts with the perceived need to ensure national security, combat terrorism and to respond to the privacy needs of everyday citizens.

Quoting from the committee's web site:

The Records Preservation and Access Committee (RPAC), a joint committee of the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the National Genealogical Society is leading the genealogical community to openly share perspectives on these vital issues and add their support to fostering education between lawmakers and genealogists. The committee believes that open communication between the nation’s genealogists and lawmakers can strike a reasonable balance between the public’s right to know while maintaining the lawmaker’s responsibility to its constituents.

This document is a project by the RPAC to provide information to lawmakers and those called to implement legislation about the genealogical community’s perspective of open access to records.

The paper provides a genealogical view of sample legislative language that may be used by those crafting bills to fairly represent the needs of genealogists and still protect the public’s rights of privacy. You may view a PDF of the bill at FGS’ website at http://www.fgs.org/rpac.

Comments

[Infinite Ancestors]

I see several problems with these recommendations.

re: "2. All states should implement the policy to link birth certificates to death certificates
and add appropriate markings to the birth certificates of deceased individuals. All states
should participate in creating an inter-state linked file for this purpose. " ...while this would be a boon for genealogists going forward, and may aid in reducing identity theft, it requires significant added infrastructure in each state to initiate processes upon births and deaths. Where is this money going to come from? Also, it obviously wouldn't match a number of records, where a person was either born or died out of the country. The cost of this should be evaluated against the benefits.

re: "3. All marriage and divorce records should be open for public inspection. Where
necessary, the Social Security numbers listed on applications should be masked from
public view." ...Marriage and divorce records of living individuals have no reasonable use for genealogists, and privacy rights of those individuals should clearly take precedence. Marriage applications particularly contain a considerable amount of personal details.

re: "4. As a general guideline, we recommend that birth records be open to the public not
less than one-hundred (100) years after the event and that death records be open not
less than twenty-five (25) years after the event. We are aware and applaud those states
with less restrictive guidelines and feel that they are taking appropriate actions to
protect their constituency." ...The requirement for birth records should also include proof of death for records that could possibly be of a living (though very old) person. Also, death records that are relatively recent and released to the public should be scrubbed of any references to possibly living people (witnesses, next of kin, etc.)

[Zadruga Guy]

Regarding #2, federal laws and regulations are already resulting in states linking birth certificates with death certificates within their own records. Linking records between states is the next logical step. Since the State Department keeps records of United States citizens that are born or die overseas, then if their records were included in the linking, then the issue of people who are born or die outside of the United States would, by-and-large, not be an issue. Since the benefits of doing this linking to prevent identify thefy are so obvious, the cost is obviously worth it, and the project should be taxpayer funded.

Regarding #3: Traditionally, marriage and divorce records have been public records -- and in most counties they still are. Anyone can look at anyone's records. This is the policy that should continue because the reason why these records were public in the first place still applies -- the public has a right to verify that someone asserting that they are married or divorced actually is married or divorced. As to the assertion that these records have no reasonable use for genealogists, nothing could be further from the truth. In order to get around brick-wall issues, it is often necessary to reconstruct entire families. Marriage and divorce records are extremely useful in whole family reconstruction. In any event, the determination of which records are genealogical useful should be left to each individual genealogist because each research situation is unique.

Regarding #4: Obviously people are sometimes still alive past 100 years of age. But it seems difficult to see how identity theft could be done with someone's 100 year old birth certificate. I think 100 years is a very reasonable period of time for the records to be closed. Since census records are opened after just 72 years, the argument could be made that 100 years is too long. Several states already have closure periods less than 100 years and a few have no closure periods at all. So no proof of death should be required.

I disagree completely with the assertion that death records of the recently deceased should be scrubbed. Typically, a newspaper obituary contains far more information about the deceased's parents and relatives than does the death certificate. So scrubbing a death certificate would, in many cases, just be closing the barn door after Elvis the horse has already left the building.

[Melinde Lutz Sanborn]

FGS, please take down this white paper. The egregious errors in the state vital records chart would be sufficient to warrant this, but I also seriously doubt that any practicing genealogist supports many of the positions taken. 20th century solutions in a 21st century world do not cut it. After almost 30 years of experimenting and millions of dollars wasted it is obvious to town and state officials that the linking of birth records to death records will never reach an appreciable percentage. When you decide to close birth records, be sure to restrict birth announcements in newspapers, First Birthday announcements, and Welcome Baby cards. The ONLY practical way to stop fraud in records of dead people is to make death records open immediately and compel employers, officials, licensing bureaus, credit card vendors, and individuals to use a national database. (No, SSDI does not capture all deaths).

[Barbara Mathews]

Take the RPAC report down now! It is an embarrassment to the genealogical community. The report completely lacks an adequate statistical basis for taking its positions. The only "facts" it does contain are two instances of the misuse of birth records. Both of these instances take place in states where the records are already closed. In short, the report's data actually supports the position that closing records doesn't solve the issues the report purports to address.

The previous comment is completely correct as to the factual errors in Appendix II, the table of current access laws. For Connecticut, every single element of the report is wrong. For Massachusetts, the adoption records are open and many of the other tidbits are off as well. What an embarrassment!

Finally, this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Why would genealogists make the argument for closing records? Do genealogists engage in fraud? Let specialists in security argue the security issues and let us argue the genealogical research issues.

[Sharon Sergeant]

In addition to the factual errors in documentation, any RPAC statement cannot be an attempt to appease financial industry and goverment emotional arguments - rather than address the real issues.

Birth certificates, or any vital record, are not breeder documents for Identity Theft.

ID theft is financial fraud, overwhelmingly facillitated by credit card and banking industry failures.

In fact, the escalation of scale for electronic fraud methods is widely known as massive breaches in the industry database and network security measures. The credit card and banking industry answer to their own failings is to sell more Identity Theft products.

Credit card and banking industry lobbies have successfully diluted government attention from the heart of these failures by aligning themselves with two factions in goverment:

1. Federal control of vital records has been an idealogical movement for at least three decades, eroding states rights and common sense.

2. Misrepresented requirements in response to 911 is now nearly a decade old, eroding personal freedom and common sense.

Neither government faction has addressed cost effective and practical measures for the problems that are real.

Genealogists should be a powerful lobby for reconciling these failures. This is Sunshine Month. Open records prevent fraud.

[2burmdad]

The RPAC is a total sellout to the concept of open records. It self-endows this "group" to speak for al of us with often more restrictive rules than in place.

Of course, as some commentators note, there is no need for any type of closed records. Make it clear --the Social Security Number of live persons should never be in an open record. But, a birth record really has no need for secrecy. Actually, hospitals probably still sell names of new babies to providers.

Marriage and divorce records are legal filings. If you don't want either proceeding, live together or stay together.

Deaths are often in the SSDI. Also, how come as I near 65, I am peppered with direct contacts for Medicare. Must be that the Feds are releasing that data.

Some states are doing great in releasing vital records. This is mostly a genealogical hobbyist board, and I wonder how some are doing their hobby or helping those at a distance as volunteers without access. We as genealogist should be saturating state legislators and agencies with the arguments for fully open records, and not being satisfied with anything less, and certainly not being subverted by "dogs with tails tucked in" organizations.

[Oxa]

This is an atrociously written document. I can't even count the number of times I felt compelled to write "awk" across a sentence that either sounded awful or didn't make any sense. Beyond that, the document itself is nothing but a plea, backed up solely by argument and a couple of anecdotes. I thought genealogists understood the importance of evidence. If they were serious about their charge and about influencing legislators, they would have produced a paper that addressed: 1. Is there a problem? 2. What is the scope, breadth, depth, and seriousness of the problem? 3. What are the causes of the problem? 4. What are the possible approaches to dealing with the problem? 5. What is the best approach to dealing with the problem, and why? Instead we have a document that presents a parochial, ignorant, uninformed view of the situation, and one that is an embarrassment to the field of genealogy.

[Jeffrey A. Bockman]

Some of these issues were discussed in my article The Future Revisited originally published in Everton's Genealogical Helper (Nov/Dec 2006). It is now available at Genealogy According to Jeff at www.JeffBockman.com/gatj.

Identity Theft & Record Access needs to be resolved before ... making all of the information available linked by individual IDs. Many jurisdictions posted or allowed the posting of selected vital record information. After 9/11/2001, many states began going in the opposite direction in a misguided attempt to protect privacy and prevent identity theft while others, including the Federal Government, continue to post information, even some about living people.

In order to be able to positively link a particular person to an event, there needs to be a unique ID for each individual. To function effectively, that ID number and some basic information needs to be publicly available.

A person’s social security number was never private and can never be made private. It was printed on pay stubs and tax forms. It was often used as a student ID or for an insurance customer ID. Indiana used it for driver’s license numbers in the 1970s. It was often required to cash checks and many people had their SS number printed on their checks to speed up the process. Social security numbers were added to birth certificates in Illinois to be able to determine exactly who the parents of a child were.

Knowing a person’s SS number SHOULD be no different than knowing their license plate, VISA, or bank account number. The knowledge should not give anyone any rights. What needs security is access to the truly private information. Hiding a person’s SS # will not prevent identity theft.

Preventing access to public or formerly public records will not help either. That will only prevent other people from being able to verify information. Why prevent access to birth, marriage, and death records when much of the same information was printed in newspapers?

[Linda]

Jeffrey -

Just what do you consider "truly private information"?

Your link doesn't work, BTW.