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Related Resources • Online Genealogical Indexes Removed Due to Privacy Concerns • Where to Obtain U.S. Vital Records • Searching the Social Security Death Index • Finding People on the Internet

From Other Guides • Adoption Search & Reunion • Identity Fraud & Theft • Privacy, Freedom & Security

By Kimberly Powell

Dateline: 02/10/03

In a twist on the age-old debate - personal freedom versus right to privacy - government officials worldwide are now actively questioning whether citizens are willing to curtail easy access to public information in exchange for greater personal and national security. Reports that the September 11 terrorists were able to get fake driver's licenses and other documents from information obtained online, plus a marked increase in cases of reported identity theft in recent years, have many government agencies scrambling to remove public documents from the Internet and enact new legislation imposing tougher restrictions on access to many government-generated records, including birth records, death records, and military records.

Genealogists, historians, and other legitimate researchers are often caught in the middle when their right to access valuable historical information in official government records conflicts with the need to keep the same facts of life from those who would abuse that information. Many of the records being threatened with closure are essential tools for genealogists searching for connections to their ancestors, as well as for academic research, medical research (e.g. studies of genetic diseases), media fact-finding, and research for legal purposes (e.g. tracing the beneficiaries of estates).

How have recent privacy and security fears affected access to public records?
Governments, both in the United States and in other countries, have jumped on the privacy bandwagon, resulting in a disturbing trend of closures and access restrictions to previously public records. Examples:

• A fear of genetic and insurance discrimination is leading to tighter protections on documents that were previously available to genealogists. Several U.S. states, including New Jersey and Wisconsin, have recently enacted legislation to remove the cause of death from death certificates.
   
• The Íslendingabók, or "Book of Icelanders," database funded by DeCode Genetics, lists every Icelander currently living and their ancestors, back to the original settlement of Iceland in the 9th century. Recent privacy laws enacted by Iceland's Parliament, however, restrict access to those genealogies, which once were public. Researchers can now only access their own families within the database.
   
• The state of Texas, as of February 2002, has six bills under consideration in the House and two in the Senate, all related to exempting military discharge records, filed in the city of separation, from required public disclosure.
   
• Despite valiant attempts by several genealogical organizations, the state of California passed SB 1614 in September 2002, limiting access to previously public vital records indexes and exempting them from disclosure under the California Public Records Act.
   
• Several other states, including Indiana and Massachusetts, also have bills under consideration which will severely limit access to public records of birth, marriage, and/or death.

What can I do to help?
Genealogists and historians who feel that important public records are being threatened by unreasonable periods of confidentiality or limitations on access should work with local genealogical societies and sympathetic legislators to amend such proposals into a form that responds to reasonable privacy expectations while not burdening legitimate research. We cannot, in today's era of terrorist threats and privacy concerns, expect all records to be made public, yet we also cannot let those fears keep us from learning from our past.

For U.S. researchers, there is yet another option. The Federation of Genealogical Societies and the National Genealogical Society formed a new committee in November 2002 to help "advise the genealogical community on ensuring proper access to historical records of genealogical value in whatever media they are recorded, on means to affect legislation, and on supporting strong records preservation policies and practices." The FGS/NGS Records Preservation and Access Committee serves as a collective voice to help promote the concerns of genealogists to legislators. State liaisons are being selected and the site will be updated with new legislative information and suggestions on how genealogists and other interested individuals can help maintain access to and preservation of important historical and genealogical records.