JGSGB-Announce Mailing List: The Assault on Access to Public Records

[JGSGB Announcements List (jgsgb-announce]

A Very Serious Issue That
Needs Our Urgent Attention

There have been increasing attempts in the past few years to close off access to public records on the pretext of preventing identity theft, despite evidence that such records play an insignificant role in the problem. There is now an effort to close access to the Social Security Death Index (SSDI), an important resource for genealogists. In a recent issue of his "Nu? What's New?" electronic newsletter, Gary Mokotoff mocking described the effort as follows:

Someone has found a leak in the dike at Lake Social Security, so Congress’ solution is not to fix the leak but to drain the lake. When told this would affect fisherman who fished in the lake, Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue said, “I am sure they can find a different lake to fish in.”

This whole effort arose in response to a case in which the identity of a child who died was stolen. No one has presented any evidence that this was the result of access to the SSDI. Indeed, it seems more likely that the information was misappropriated somewhere in the healthcare system. Moreover, the presence of the information in the SSDI should have prevented the identity theft, since the SSDI made it easy for anyone to determine that the Social Security number was that of a deceased person.

Gary Mokotoff's description is very apt. Rather than fixing the real problem, officials are enacting regulations that give the appearance of taking action, when, in fact, their actions either fail to accomplish the goal or, as in this case, actually aggravate the problem.

See the section "Additional Background" below for more details about the situation.

Please Take Action

We encourage you to go to http://fgs.org/rpac, a page on the website of the Federation of Genealogical Societies, to learn about what you can do to help stop this ill-conceived regulation. Among other things, please immediately sign the "We the People Petition" on the White House website (even though the procedure for doing so is a bit onerous). For additional encouragement, please see the following blog posting:

http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2012/02/23/saving-ssdi-its-up-to-us/

Signing the Petition

Here are details on how to sign the petition.

If you do not have an account on the White House site (which you probably don't), start by going to https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/user/register. You will have to provide your first name, last name, and email address. The hardest part is deciphering the distorted text string, one of two that must be entered into the box at the bottom to prove that you are a real person and not a machine. Make your best guess and then click the "Submit" button.

At this point, an email message will be sent to the address you provided to make sure that it is a real address. That message contains your initial (one-time) login information and a Web URL that you have to go to in order to complete the validation process. On that Web page, you must select "Edit Profile/Change Password" to set up your permanent password. Do that, and make sure to record or remember the password.

Now you can go to the page with the petition: http://wh.gov/khE

At the end of the text of the petition, click on the "Sign in" button and log in using your email address and new password. Scroll back down to the end of the petition. The "SIGN THIS PETITION" button will now be active. Click on it. Whew! You have successfully taken a step to help preserve access to important genealogical records.

Contact the Committee Members and Your Representatives in Congress

Probably even more effective than signing the petition is sending a personal message about this issue to your two senators, to your representative in Congress, and to members of the Subcommittee on Social Security.

To see who serves on the subcommittee, go to: http://waysandmeans.house.gov/About/Members.htm and scroll down to the section on the "Subcommittee on Social Security". For each of the members, go back to the top of the page and click on the link for that member's name. That will bring you to the member's home page, from which you can send a message. (You might want to compose your message in advance and paste it in each time.)

To find your own senators and representative, you can use the handy AIPAC page at http://capwiz.com/aipac/directory/congdir.tt. You enter your address information, starting with a ZIP code and adding a street address if your ZIP code area includes more than one Congressional district. Clicking on a Congressman's photo will take you to that member's website, from which you can send a message.

Additional Background

The following is more specific background on the issue that is adapted from a posting on the IAJGS Leadership Forum by Jan Meisels Allen, chairperson of the IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee.

The House Ways and Means Committee Social Security Subcommittee held a hearing on the Social Security Death Index (SSDI), the commercial name of the Death Master File (DMF), on February 2nd. The genealogical community was not invited to testify. The Committee members and those who were invited to testify made the genealogy community the scapegoat for identity theft by focusing on the public access to the SSDI on genealogical websites.

One of the witnesses was a grieving father whose deceased child's Social Security number was stolen and used fraudulently by identity thieves to obtain tax refunds. He was very concerned that his deceased daughter's Social Security number could be seen on the Internet by anyone. The Social Security Administrator spoke on behalf of the Administration, and during the question and answer period stated that genealogists do not need the SSDI, that they can get their information in other ways, and that they should wait for 75 years as they do for the release of US censuses. It was reported that the Administration is very concerned with who has access to the SSDI.

The Subcommittee on Social Security of the House Ways and Means Committee is proposing to completely shut down use of the SSDI by genealogists, as well as other industries such as banking and insurance that rely upon its information. Such an attempt is short-sighted and runs counter to the original purpose of the SSDI, which was to combat fraud.

Each year, fraudulent tax-refund claims are, indeed, filed with the IRS based on identity theft using information about recently deceased children and adults. The IRS could close the door to this form of identity theft if it would simply use the Death Master File for the purpose for which it was created: to reduce fraud. If returns claiming a tax refund were screened against the Master Death File and matching cases identified for special processing, the thief should receive a rejection notice for the filing.