Bush Admin. to Deny Public Access to Birth and Death Records for 100 years

[Clara T]

The Life and Death of Public Records
By Terry Allen, In These Times. Posted February 21, 2006.

Buried in a 2004 law on terrorism is text that could bar public access to birth and death certificates for up to 100 years.

Sometimes it's the small abuses scurrying below radar that reveal how profoundly the Bush administration has changed America in the name of national security. Buried within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 is a regulation that bars most public access to birth and death certificates for 70 to 100 years. In much of the country, these records have long been invaluable tools for activists, lawyers and reporters to uncover patterns of illness and pollution that officials miss or ignore.

In These Times has obtained a draft of the proposed regulations now causing widespread concern among state officials. It reveals plans to create a vast database of vital records to be centralized in Washington and details measures that states must implement -- and pay millions for -- before next year's scheduled implementation.

The draft lays out how some 60,000 already strapped town and county offices must keep the birth and death records under lock and key and report all document requests to Washington. Individuals who show up in person will still be able to obtain their own birth certificates and, in some cases, the birth and death records of an immediate relative, and "legitimate" research institutions may be able to access files. But reporters and activists won't be allowed to fish through records, many family members looking for genetic clues will be out of luck, and people wanting to trace adoptions will dead-end. If you are homeless and need your own birth certificate, forget it: no address, no service.

Consider the public health implications. A few years back, a doctor in a tiny Vermont town noticed that two patients who lived on the same hill had ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. Hearing rumors of more cases of the relatively rare and always fatal disease, the doctor notified the health department. Citing lack of resources, it declined to investigate. The doc then told a reporter, who searched the death certificates filed in the town office only to find that ALS had already killed five of the town's 1,300 residents. It was statistically possible, but unlikely, that this 10-times-higher-than-normal incidence was simply chance. Since no one knows what causes ALS, clusters like this one, once revealed, help epidemiologists assess risk factors, warn doctors to watch for symptoms,and alert neighbors and activists.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/32242

[Deja Q]

1. So how does Osama Bin Chowin' benefit from this law?!

[HeeBGBz]

2. Freedom slipping away

Deal or No Deal.

[Che_Nuevara]

3. What does he have to gain through this restriction? (n/t)

[Dora]

8. corporate protection

If a researcher can't study birth or death records in a community, then establishing a relationship between childhood deaths from cancer and the presence of an environmental pollutant is much harder to do.

This is a very very important revelation.

[IndyOp]

12. No one can detect if people die from government neglect or malice -

I heard about this earlier today and I believe that in addition to the issues re: activists and reporters wanting access to records to investigate patterns of deaths that may be due to medical or corporate negligence, there is this other darker possibility: If they die from government neglect (Katrina, failing to warn about pollutants after 9/11) or malice (torture) no one will be able to track them.

Makes me sick to think about it: :puke:

[CrazyOrangeCat]

13. I don't understand it at all . . .

. . . but it is just one of dozens of intrusions on our rights.

Perhaps it is a long-term plot to condition citizens . . . to the idea of not having any rights at all. A few more years of this and they probably think that there will be no one left with the nerve to question anything they do.

If so, they are woefully mistaken.

(Oh, and piss-off, Agent Mike . . .)

[Clara T]

21. To cover up disappearances

-To cover up disappearances
disaster death tolls for example or possibly death squads/internments of foreign "nationals;
-Another aspect is to cover up election fraud
i.e. you can't tell whether someone on a voter registration roll exists;
-And of course the usual data mining familial relations.

Some interesting comments after article suggest everyone read these.

Here are two:
"I've talked before on Alternet about the link between the Real ID Act and the Voter's identification requirements. I've talked before about how real people work out versions of their names that are unique identities to them to help deter identity confusion, which I suspect is still far more common than identity theft.

Another thing about uniform databases, it makes it disturbingly easy for the federal government to disappear Americans and people living in this country. All that experience the U.S. government has working with South and Central American death squads no doubt is helping the U.S.A. move forward with its national database.

We have a major problem in this country with all of these identity requirements and Soviet-style documentation requirements. These laws are taking away, have taken away, many of our freedoms.

How do we tie all of these issues together and get the mainstream press to pound it into the pavement, though? A little conversation here, another wee talk there will not stop this monstrous movement of our government into totalitarian control. This is the first I have heard of this particular issue, and it scares me even more as I must obtain certified copies of my birth certificate in order to change my name (i.e., change my first name to an initial) so that I can continue to use my bank accounts, be profiled as a non-risk for flight (i.e., show up as having a credit history), and otherwise exist in this society."

And this one:

"A few years ago I logged onto the Social Security website and looked up the death record of my ex-husband for some information the military needed for my son's application to the USAF. Last week I tried to look it up again because I had forgotten if his birthday was Feb. 7 or Feb. 9 and I wanted to remember. To my surprise the ability to do this from this website is now gone. I called them and they would not give me the information, even though I gave them his social and his date of death and his place of birth. They told me I would have to go in person to my local office, fill out a form, and prove I should have access to this information. WOW!"

It is here everyone in a thousand different ways day by day. Wake Up!

http://www.alternet.org/rights/32242?comments=view&cID=88326&pID=88049#c88326

[CrazyOrangeCat]

28. Thanks for the explanation--makes sense.

And I don't doubt their intentions for a minute. What just doesn't click for me is how they think they're going to pull some cloak and dagger coup de gras. Doesn't there have to be a moment of truth, when they start putting down massive uprisings? I would think there will be blood spilled over the demise of the Constitution. Or will everyone simply go quietly?

They are so damned clueless and incompetent. How can this group if ijits possibly set up some new NeoCon state? While they're f'ing around with the Constitution, Al-Quida REALLY WILL sneak a nuke in through one of the big ports. BFEE is going to wind up killing everybody, including themselves.

Sure wish the bastards would get a new hobby.

[The Backlash Cometh]

20. It's ridiculous because we're going to have a boomerang of transparency

once that fucker leaves office. The next president is going to promise to reveal all of the Bush Administration secrets. Since Bush has given the executive branch so much power, what has been done, can be undone.

[mtnester]

4. Jeez, this will set geneological research back to the dark ages

I was just commenting the other day that in this day and age of electronic records that geneology since the advent of the SS# was an easier task...maybe not so much anymore.

[Booster]

16. Right. Now Bushco is taking on the Mormons, and when the

Mormons get made, shit happens.

[mtnester]

18. I hope - they are the best damned record keppers around

won't allow "speculative" geneological submissions (which is good good good from the point of view of a geneological researcher)

[flyarm]

24. please explain this mormon "getting made"..thanks..n/t

[Booster]

29. Sorry - typo. I meant "mad".

[Jersey Ginny]

5. I can't think what the point is of this n/t

[CrazyOrangeCat]

17. Hi, Jersey Ginny!

I lived in Morristown, right down the rr tracks from you, for a couple years in the late eighties.

Jersey is COOL!

[kestrel91316]

25. Either it's just about CONTROL and POWER, pure and simple,

or they have got some truly nefarious purpose that we haven't figured out. Like maybe "disappearing" people???

Can't see some person's death cert or birth cert, and maybe all other records of them have been wiped by some company in cahoots with the fascists, and how would you be able to prove a missing person ever existed? You could file a missing persons report and the cops would say there is no record they ever existed.

I know, I know.........tin foil hattish of me.........

But I have seen too much from these people and I put ABSOLUTELY NOTHING past them.

[Dunvegan]

6. Two Words: KATRINA. MISSING.

[Dora]

9. Good point. n/t

[bpilgrim]

26. and the FUTURE missing

peace

[KamaAina]

7. Now we'll never get to the truth behind Coulter's driver licenses

One age in DC, different age in Conn... does s/he have one in Fla. now, too, with yet a third age?!

[DS1]

11. forget the age, I want to know when he changed to a woman

[The Gunslinger]

10. More republican "Big Government"

[HockeyMom]

14. They might be out of luck

The LDS Church. They have been transcribing these vital stats for many years now. Recently, they have even put them up on the net. I'm trying to remember from the last time I searched, but I do think you can search before 100 years ago.

This is all connected to their religion, suffice it to say. I would expect that this may cause a furor with them. Preventing them from practicing their religion?

There is also a genealogical DNA database in the works. Have you heard of this? I was asked to contribute to this, but declined. Don't trust things like that.

[teryang]

15. Obscurantism, tool of dictators

Denial of information equals no marketplace of ideas; no politics; no justice.

[Generator]

19. In essence they want control over factual reality

Now they are going to control who "exists" and who doesn't. When they were born or died. Next up-they will be in league with Stalin and just have the faces removed from the history books. You never even happened. Sorry but I've got the chills on this.

They are trying to control reality. This is a nightmare sci-fi novel.

[gordianot]

22. Bulldog Gannon would have benefited from this anonymity.

Think how easy it will be to disappear and keep those pesky investigators from finding out who you really might be. An excellent way to hide terrorists, spooks, hit men and women, reassign identities etc.. The possibilities are endless.

[seafan]

23. Boy, do we have a mountain of work to do in January, '07.

Some of state officials around the country are questioning whether the new regulations themselves illegally tread on states' rights. But the feds have been coy. Richard McCoy, public health statistic chief in Vermont, one of the nation's 14 open-records states, says, "No state is mandated to meet the regs. However, if they don't, then residents of that state will not be able to access any federal services, including social security and passports. States have no choice."

But while the public loses access to records, the federal government gains a gargantuan national database easily cross-referenced in the name of national security. The feds' claim that increased security will deter identity theft and terrorism is facile. Wholesale corporate data gathering is the major nexis of identity theft.

snip

Meanwhile, the quiet clampdown on vital records is part of a growing consolidation of information at the federal level. "That information will dovetail with the Real ID Act of 2005," says Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Real ID cards are the other shoe that is scheduled to drop in three years." That act, signed into law last May, establishes national standards for state-issued driver's licenses and ID cards, and centralizes the information into a database.

Aside from public health and privacy concerns, closing vital records incurs a steep intangible cost: It undermines community in places where that healthy ethos still survives. In small town America, the local clerk's office is a sociable place where government wears the face of your neighbor.

snip

This may not be the most dramatic danger to democracy, but it is one of the Bush administration's many quiet, incremental assaults on the health of America's body politic. And it may end up listed on the death certificate for open society.

[dylan33]

27. 9/11 did not

change everything. They want to change everything. :nuke: