ETHICS-IN-GENEALOGY-L Archives

Archiver > ETHICS-IN-GENEALOGY > 2003-08 > 1061573659


From: Fridrik Skulason <>
Subject: Re: [Ethics] Anyone here besides me?
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 17:34:24 +0000
References: <5.1.0.14.2.20030821202335.01c47f20@mail.earthlink.net> <142.179f97bd.2c76c8da@aol.com> <5.1.0.14.2.20030821202335.01c47f20@mail.earthlink.net> <5.1.0.14.2.20030822093236.01c424e8@mail.earthlink.net>
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20030822093236.01c424e8@mail.earthlink.net>


This is getting interesting....let's do a bit of cross-cultural comparisons
on issues of privacy and such, shall we?

> In the state I live in, improper publication of records for voter
> registration or drivers license is against the law.

The issue of publication of voter registration records does not arise over here,
as there simply is no such thing as "voter registration records" - the central
government-run database is simply considered to be up-to date on who has the
right to vote and who has not, and people just show up at the voting booth. The
way we see it is that this leads to a much better-functioning democracy, with
voter turnout generally in the 70-80% range.

As for drivers licenses, that information is not publicly available, partly
because there is no demand or interest in it whatsoever. What would the use
be anyhow? Besides, this type of information would not be considered "public".

> The records may be "public records" but they are not "freely
> available" to anyone who wants them, and commercial or business use of this
> information is specifically prohibited.

The position over here is that public records are supposed to be freely available,
but not necessarily "free"....for example if I want to know who the owner of a
particular car is, I have to call the equivalent of a 900-number - I can get the
information freely - it just costs me the equivalent of a dollar or two.

Commercial and business use of that information is also prohibited, but that is
not just a policy - it is the law.

> In addition, in my state, my identity is my property, and it cannot be used or
> disseminated without my prior written consent.

But what is "your identity" ? The surprising fact is that we have much better
safeguards in place than Americans do, despite the free availability of the
information - the restrictions are on the use of that information.

For example, anyone can enter my name (I am the only person in the country with
my name) in a database on the web, and look up things like my phone number,
my ID number (similar to your SSN), my address, or the fact that I am married and
have a 7-year old daughter, for example.

But so what?

It is impossible to use this information for any kind of identity theft. The very
fact that this information is supposed to be public, means that someone knowing my ID
number, having a copy of my birth certificate and so on would not be able to pretend
he was me - get a credit card in my name or anything like that.

Americans often seem to be under the mistaken assumption that their privacy and
identity is protected, but all the stories about identity theft prove that this is
just not the case.

Another example - as I said, someone can collect my address or phone number. However,
he cannot legally call me up, or send me mail trying to sell me something without
permission. In other words - we don't have problems with telemarketers or junk mailers.

We do have problems with e-mail spam, though, but that does not originate within
our country, but rather in countries with inadequate privacy protection standards like
Nigeria or the US.

> Our national Constitution provides that I have a
> right to be secure in my person and papers - the unrestricted dissemination
> of my identity is not conducive to being secure in my person and papers.

No. the problem is that because the US does not restrict the use of personal
information about you, you have a problem. The way I see it, the problem is not
the availability of the information, but rather how it is used.

> Such public release of personal information
> jeopardizes people in a variety of ways (stalkers, identity theft, to name
> just a few) and should not be done.

The availability of the information does not make much of a difference as far as
a determined stalker is concerned. As for identity theft - yes, it is a problem how
woefully inadequate the US system is in that respect, I agree with that.

> be used, but I don't see that there is any way that most of it can be
> enforced.

That is because you do not have the legal protection that most European countries
have, for example.

> As to genealogical information, when publishing such information, data
> about living people is supposed to be supressed to protect their
> privacy.

"Supposed to"? No. Why?

The general consensus over here is that genealogy information on living individuals
may be freely published without their knowledge or permission. There are a few
restrictions, however:

1) Information on the biological parents of an adoptee may not be disclosed
without the permission of the biological parents and the adoptee (or the
adoptive parents if the adoptee is under the age of 18).

2) Information on fathers of the children of single mothers may not be
disclosed except with permission of at least one of the three people involved,
unless at least 30 years have passed from the birth of the child.

There are a few unclear issues though, partly caused be conflicts between different
laws.

One example involves married same-sex couples. The privacy laws say that information
on sexual orientation may not be distributed publicly, without the consent of the
parties involved, while the anti-sexual-orientation-discrimination laws basically says
that same-sex couples should be treated just like different-sex couples in this
respect - so there is a question of whether listing same-sex spouses in a public
database is required or illegal.

> Data about the living is not "freely available" here.

No, but it is here, and nobody has a problem with it.

There is a database at www.islendingabok.is, which has pretty much the complete
genealogy of every person in the country, as far as records go. What this means
in practice is that anyone can go there, look up 5000 or so of his ancestors,
check out how he is related to anyone else in the country (on the average, two
people in Iceland picked at random have a common ancestor 7 generations back),
browse through his family tree and so on.

This database opened in mid-January this year. Since then, the majority of
people in the country have accessed it, and there have been no serious complaints
about it - that is, there have been various complaints about errors in the
database (which are corrected immediately), but no serious complaints about the
existence of the database as such, exactly because as I said earlier - we consider
this data to be public and not "private".

> I find your perspective to be sad. I could not ever live in such a country.

I assure you that I would never want to live in a country like the US, but
that is of course for entirely different reasons.

-frisk

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