MGC Sentinel

  Richard McCoy was a member of the records access panel sponsored by MGC at NERGC 2013. His information on medical records and issues of confidentiality and errors struck chords with everyone. Rich has sent us a list of stories on this topic to share. Thank you, Rich!  Jordan Robertson, "How Medical Identity Theft Can Give You a Headache that Will Last for Years," Bloomburg Business News, posted 8 Nov 2012; http://go.bloomberg.com/tech-blog/2012-11-08-how-medical-identity-theft-can-give-you-a-decade-of-headaches/ : viewed 23 April 2013. Angelo Young, "Your Hospital Records Might Not Be As Safe from an Identity Theft As You Think," International Business Times, posted 10 February 2012; http://www.ibtimes.com/your-hospital-records-might-not-be-safe-identity-thief-you-think-1074552 : viewed 23 April 2013. David Schultz, "As Patients' Records Go Digital, Theft and Hacking Problems Grow," Kaiser Health News, posted 3 June 2012; http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2012/June/04/electronic-health-records-theft-hacking.aspx : viewed 23 April 2013. Federal Trade Commission, "Medical Identity Theft," Consumer Information; http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0171-medical-identity-theft : viewed 23 April 2013.   Photograph Courtesy of Microsoft...

MGC took on several responsibilities at the 2013 New England Regional Genealogical Conference last week in Manchester, New Hampshire. We ran a discussion on Open Records, we sponsored a luncheon, we put on a special interest group, and we had a booth in the exhibit hall. Records Access Panel We had looked forward to having Thomas MacEntee as our panel discussion moderator. From Chicago, Thomas led a discussion on records access at an annual meeting of the Association of Professional Genealogists. We adopted his format which included skits to make it more interesting for the audience. Alas, there were torrential rains in Chicago and the flooding there together with airline computer problems nixed his attendance at NERGC completely. With Thomas's inspired format, we began to panic. Micheal Leclerc, Genealogist and blogger at Mocavo.com, came to our rescue. He was willing to take on the improvisation as well as moderate a discussion...

MGC Civil Records Co-Director Mary Ellen Grogan is our watchdog for bills in the Massachusetts legislature on Beacon Hill. She summarizes the situation here. The Massachusetts Genealogical Council monitors legislative and administrative activities of governmental agencies which affect genealogists and family history researchers. We sponsor and support legislation designed to expand the resources and accessibility of research services; and, where appropriate, we oppose laws and regulations which limit or close access to records. In the last ten years, significant efforts have been made on both state and federal levels to close records that have been traditionally used by genealogists. The impetus behind these efforts is not completely clear, but arguments center on issues of privacy. In most cases, closure of records to genealogists is not the result of actual legislation but of local regulations and the interpretation of these issues by records custodians. HIPAA, the Patriot Act, and identity theft have...

After two days of sponsored activities, Saturday gives MGC officers and directors a chance to spend time in the exhibit hall booth and to attend lectures. The exhibit hall is open 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. MGC is in booth 101. As you walk in the main entrance, we are in the first aisle of booths. The booth is filled with take-aways. Don't miss information about our upcoming Annual Meeting and Seminar on July 20th in Worcester. The seminar features the dynamic speaker Judy Russell, CG, CGL. Friday needs a bit of recapping. Laura Prescott did a fantastic job as our luncheon speaker yesterday. She delighted us with stories of records access from Massachusetts and from throughout the U.S. She gave us many ideas for approaching the "gatekeepers" of repositories and government offices. She closed by rallying us to work for access and preservation. MGC also hosted a Special Interest Group...

Lunch, sponsored by MGC, features Laura Prescott Laura's lunch topic is "Jousting with the Gatekeepers."  Lunch requires pre-registration. If I don't run, soon, I'll be late myself... Special Interest Group: "Records Access Denied?" Tonight NERGC features the Special Interest Groups, or SIGs. They are designed to be information get-togetheres around interesting topics. They start at 7:00 and end at 9:00. (The end time of 10 is a typo in today's program.) Our SIG will be on the 12th floor of the conference hotel, in the Governor's Suite. We will have a wonderful nighttime view of Manchester and surrounding towns. Come by just for the view if you want. Our informal program plan is to have a mini-workshop. We'll have our laptops there. Tell us what state your are from and we'll figure out how to use the internet to find out if your legislature is considering bills that might limit your...

MGC's Access to Records for Genealogists -- 3:15-4:15 pm, in the Stark Room. It's not just your average panel discussion! Today's MGC Open Records Access discussion will include some fun as well. The Massachusetts Genealogical Council is sponsoring "Access to Records for Genealogists" from 3:15 to 4:15 in the Stark room. You don't want to miss this one. Thomas MacEntee will be our emcee and moderator. After a brief panel discussion about issues, we will move into an improvisational skit. Come get a few laughs while you learn about the sense and complete nonsense of SSDI closure to prevent tax fraud. Thomas MacEntee, Polly FitzGerald Kimmitt, Richard McCoy (vital records registrar of Vermont), Sharon E Sergeant and Barbara Mathews will acting the parts of a U.S. Congressional staff person, a newspaper reporter, a police detective, a victim of identity theft, and a genealogy society leader. Who gets which role????? Come and...

  In the U.S., there are 57 varieties of vital statistics: the fifty states, five territories, Washington, DC, and New York City keep vital statistics in their own systems. The federal government requires reporting to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), and to the Social Security Administration, to name just two. To do this, all 57 entities and the federal government must agree on how to transmit information. There are two ways in which these groups work together. The 57 recording entities are involved in the non-governmental National Association for Public Health Statistics and Information Systems (NAPHSIS). From its side, DHHS has evolved the Model Act and Regulations, a set of suggestions about how individual states can enact law and develop regulations about how to implement that law. The states are not required to implement the Model Act and...

Genealogical societies in Oklahoma and Georgia are asking for our support now. If you are concerned about records access in these states, please consider supporting the efforts of genealogists in them to keep records available. In Oklahoma, a law enacted in 2011 limited access to all vital records to those people named in them. The regulations caught up to the law recently with serious repercussions, particularly for death records. If you have been denied a death record from Oklahoma in the last two years, please send a description of your experience to this email address: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . In Georgia, there continues to be serious concern about the ability of the Georgia State Archives to remain open to researchers. Right now the state legislature is considering two bills. One would move management of the archives from the Secretary of State’s office to the University of Georgia System. The other, put forward by the...

Nora Galvin is the president and government relations liaison of the Connecticut Professional Genealogists Council, and president of the Connecticut Ancestry Society. Nora serves as a great example today, showing us how genealogists can speak up on behalf of keeping access to public records free. Today she is presenting a statement to the Connecticut General Assembly's Joint Committee on Government Administration and Elections regarding proposed House Bill 5421. I am grateful to Nora for giving me permission to publish her address here.   My name is Nora Galvin. I am a professional genealogist and president of the Connecticut Professional Genealogists Council, Inc. I make my living by researching the history of Connecticut families in the state's rich record collections.   Three organizations have asked me to represent them here today: the Connecticut Professional Genealogists Council, Connecticut Ancestry Society and the Connecticut Society of Genealogists. I unofficially represent the other 13 genealogy societies that are also incorporated...

Fraud against United States government agencies is rampant. It is impossible to obtain an exact figure, because not all agencies are measuring the extent to which they are losing money, but estimates of over $100 billion/year in improper payments are common.  We are all aware of and horrified by this. It's unfair, unscrupulous, and worsening our already faltering economy. And we agree that IT MUST STOP. Yet all too often these days it seems that efforts to stop this trend are led by individual legislators who propose bills of only small scope. When we see a congressman propose a bill, it seems to be either because he knows of the problem and wants to fix it, or has a constituent who was the indirect victim of such a fraud. It seems easy enough to propose, is a hot-button issue and seems like a great way to attract votes. But most of...

The U.S. House of Representatives in session, www.house.gov.

Every indication so far is that this year will again see efforts to close the SSDI in two ways: first by legislation to close it for three years to all but fraud investigators; second by legislation to make the Freedom of Information Act inapplicable to the Social Security Administration (it was by FOIA that the SSDI was opened two decades ago). Either method would work against genealogists.

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Sam Johnson (R TX 3) was reappointed chair of the Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee. The announcement can be read at http://samjohnson.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=316913.

At this time, at least one bill has been filed using text that would close the SSDI for two to three years. Rep. Richard Nugent (R FL 11) filed this bill, known as H.R.295. You can use the Library of Congress THOMAS portal to find the bill’s text and to track its passage at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/thomas. Select “bill number” and type in HR295. The resulting page will provide many access points: to the bill text, to the current committee assignments, etc.

Rep. Mike Capuano (D MA 7) is planning to submit a similar bill. His office has been approached by immigration and tax people in government to submit a bill covering their issues. We were able to contact his Issues Director Kate Auspitz in order to pass on information showing that the core issue is inter-agency communication rather than access to the social security numbers of dead people. We made a case for genealogical access during the critical three-year waiting period for compassionate reasons.

While Congressman Capuano sees merit in our arguments, we will need to make those arguments again at the committee hearings in order to have change happen. We explained that such testimony had been purposefully cut off last year. His office pointed out that he is in the political minority in the House and not able to force a committee chair to permit our testimony. We need to keep our community ready to submit testimony and to be able to articulate the issues when the time comes. So how do we learn that?

This year sees new efforts to curtail genealogical access to the Social Security Death Index (known to the government as the Death Master File). Rep. Richard Nugent of Florida submitted HR 295 (view the text here). Section 7 of the bill closes SSDI access for about three years. The only people who could win access in that crucial time would be those who can certify that they are investigating fraud. The bill would hamper the efforts of compassionate work by forensic genealogists, including those who find the next of kin for Unclaimed Persons or those who do similar work for servicemen killed in action. This two-year legislative session will need monitoring and our timely responses. Be ready to lend your voice when it is needed. Sign up for the IAJGS alerts email list. Learn more about IAJGS's Public Records Access Monitoring committee here. Jan Meisels Allen has announced that IAJGS will...

You heard it from us first! The Fall issue of the MGC Newsletter is hot off the presses! We have a date and speaker announcment for next year's MGC Annual Meeting and Seminar. You can follow this link to read it: http://bit.ly/TQ2EXa.  If you are a member and require a paper copy, please send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ....

We Need Your Support Now More Than Ever! In these days of tight budgets, more and more institutions are choosing or being forced to reduce hours of operation, close outright, and even dispose of records to free up valuable storage space. The result is that the public has ever more restricted access to records. Massachusetts, thanks in large part to the efforts of MGC over the past thirty years, has notclosed records, and the law that was first enacted in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1641 to keep our records open and accessible to all citizens remains in effect.  Imagine a World With Closed Records Many states in the nation have chosen to close access to civil records such as birth, marriage and death records to all but proven family members. But how do you prove you are related without providing these same certificates? We need vital records to make any progress whatsoever in...

Thanks to Judy Russell and the Legal Genealogist blog we are aware of yet another threat to public records, this time in Washington State. It seems that the Washington State Department of Health has sent a request to the 4-member State Records Committee to close access to births more recent than 125 years, and marriages and deaths more recent than 50 years. Obviously another knee-jerk, uninformed reaction to credit fraud, but we need to do what we can to lend our support. Note that this is not going to the Washington State Legislature or any court, just to this small committee of appointed, not elected, members, as Judy points out. You can ready Judy's blog post here: http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2012/11/08/washington-public-records-threatened/. ...

In a happy turn of events, Georgia's Governor Nathan Deal and Secretary of State Brian Kemp announced yesterday that the Georgia State Archives will remain open at least through June 20, 2013. It is slated to be transferred to the University System of Georgia after that, so this opens up more questions. This new budgetary commitment allows the archives to remain open under current hours. http://gov.georgia.gov/press-releases/2012-10-18/deal-kemp-keep-georgia’s-archives-open...

Fiona Gartland of the Irish Times (www.IrishTimes.com), writes: "Genealogists have raised concerns about moves to resurrect the Privacy Bill 2006, which they say could restrict access to records for genealogical or biographical research." If this bill is reintroduced and passed, will it have serious consequences on all of those seeking to trace their roots in Ireland? Click here to read Fiona's article, "Concerns bill could restrict research into roots."  Entitled an "Act to provide for a Tort of Violation of Privacy; and to provide for matters connected therewith," Privacy Bill 2006 was restored to the Order Paper of Seanad Éireann on September 25th 2012, at number nine. Based on the premise that everyone has a right to privacy, the bill seeks to guarantee a right to privacy, and in the process may restrict access to certain records.  It says, in part: Tort of violation of privacy3. Section 2 provides that it is a tort...

Jan Meisels Allen, IAJGS Vice President and Chairperson of the IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee keeps MGC up-to-date on legislative developments. Here is a summary of her latest announcement. State vital records laws that redact or restrict information can stymie genealogists.  A recent example is Virginia's law allowing only Virginia residents the right to access public records. According to the National Freedom of Information Coalition (NFOIC) there are eight states that have or have had similar provisions: Arkansas, Georgia, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania,  Tennessee,  and Virginia.  See: http://tinyurl.com/99emf8o. Several groups and individuals are taking this provision to the U.S. Supreme Court. One person from Rhode Island and another from California are challenging the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provision on access for only Virginia citizens. Two Federal appellate courts have each ruled differently, which is why it is being appealed to the Supreme Court. A decision by the Supreme Court whether it will...

The US Congress ( House of Representatives and Senate) has adjourned for elections and won't return until November 13 for the "lame duck" session which will last up until the new Congress is seated in January. No action on the six bills before either the House or Senate regarding the Social Security Death Index (the commercial name of the Death Master File) will occur before the lame duck session -- if then. They had been waiting for the Obama Administration bill, but with Congress out until November 13 nothing has been forthcoming from the Administration at this time. Jan Meisels AllenIAJGS Vice PresidentChairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee...

Now here is a step that will make a tremendous difference in helping to stem to tide of identity fraud. "IRS Takes New Steps to Prevent Fraud" was written by Sam Imandoust, Esq, a legal analyst for the Identity Theft Resource Center. He grants permission to post/reprint this article with attribution. You can find the original at www.idtheftcenter.blogspot.com. IRS Takes New Steps to Prevent Fraud The IRS has been dealing with an epidemic of tax fraud and identity theft.  An audit report prepared by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) estimated that 940,000 tax returns involved identity theft in 2011. The same audit report estimates that in addition to those, another 1.5 million fraudulent tax returns may have been submitted but not detected by the IRS. Fortunately, in 2012 the IRS has been taking additional steps to help stem the flow of these fraudulent returns.  In the TIGTA audit, several recommendations were made to...

ATLANTA, GA -- Official statement from the state: "The Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget has instructed the Office of the Secretary of State to further reduce its budget for AFY13 and FY14 by 3% ($732,626). As it has been for the past two years, these cuts do not eliminate excess in the agency, but require the agency to further reduce services to the citizens of Georgia. As an agency that returns over three times what is appropriated back to the general fund, budget cuts present very challenging decisions. We have tried to protect the services that the agency provides in support of putting people to work, starting small businesses, and providing public safety. To meet the required cuts, it is with great remorse that I have to announce, effective November 1, 2012, the Georgia State Archives located in Morrow, GA will be closed to the public. The decision to reduce...

I'm a little excited today because in doing some genealogical research I came across a site that provides a portion of the Social Security number (SSN) of individuals. I am glad that not all websites have had a knee jerk reaction and simply redacted these numbers because it is essential that we have access to them in order to PREVENT identity fraud. The owners of the site, called Sysoon, took the time to put a link underneath the SSN which says, "Why we show it," and here is what they say: Identity Theft of the Deceased Identity theft is the fastest growing crime worldwide! How to Prevent Identity Theft of the Deceased? Identity theft: It can happen to anyone, living or dead. Identity theft is the fastest growing crime worldwide. Your identity does not automatically die with you. Identity thieves used the name and Social Security number of someone who is...

I've been home from the FGS 2012 Conference in Birmingham, Alabama for a week now and am still catching up on spreading the news of all the great happenings there. Perhaps my favorite surprise was the success of the APG Roundtable, "Records Access: The Art of Advocacy," held on Tuesday, August 28th. Sponsored by the New England Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists (NEAPG) and organized by Diane Gravel, it was in the form of a panel moderated by Thomas MacEntee. The panel, consisting of Kelvin Meyers, Terri Flack, Alvie Davidson and Polly Kimmitt, were asked a series of questions about the current state of records access legislation. (The link at the end of this article gives more details on the panelists and questions asked). Though RPAC has traditionally been the group in which we place our confidence, the community is seeking more in terms of instruction, advice, outreach and coordination...

Jan Meisels Allen, Vice President of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) and chairperson of IAJGS's Public Records Access Monitoring Committee keeps us informed of developments at the Federal level regarding records access. Here is her latest alert. Here is a link to an advance copy of IRS [Internal Revenue Service] Revenue Procedure 2012-35 effective August 31, 2012 : http://benefitslink.com/src/irs/revproc2012-35.pdf   Evidently, the IRS for "humane" reasons will forward a letter for those who are attempting to locate missing persons.  This "service" is available to private individuals and state and federal agencies.  What they have done is define this service for humane reasons.  What the IRS has determined (see Section 4.02) are examples not considered as humane including: "tracing a family tree or attempting to locate individuals for reunion purposes " .   What is also ironic is that the requestor must provide the missing person's Social Security Number along with the letter to be forwarded.  The IRS...

MGC The issue of records access will be front and center at the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) 2012 Conference in Birmingham, Alabama next week. For the first time, MGC will have a table at a national conference, and we hope to spread the word about our activities as watchdogs over public records. Our display will be in the Society Showcase section of the exhibit hall and attendees will find answers to many questions plus information on how to get more involved. It can be confusing to those not accustomed to the legislative process, but we aim to demystify! If you are in Birmingham, please stop by our table, pick up our newsletter and think about joining our society! APG On the Tuesday night before every FGS conference, the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) traditionally holds their APG Roundtable. This year it is Records Access: The Art of Advocacy. MGC is thrilled to welcome APG to the...