This email from Kathy Sullivan is about some very important pending
legislation. If passed it will affect all genealogists; and is just another
infringement on our rights by 'Big Brother government'.
The whole governmental approach to this subject is an outrage, so PLEASE
register your opinion, and speak up if you want to see this action
withdrawn.
I hope you will FWD: it to everyone you know who will do the same.
Thanks,
Martha
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Kathy Gunter Sullivan, CG" <sully1(a)carolina.rr.com
Re: Congress to block public access to SSDI
Genealogists need to know that Congress intends to block public access to
the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) except for a certain few chosen
vendors who meet Congres- sional criteria (as yet undetermined but
apparently favoring vendors with the "best" hired lobbyist).
A Congressional hearing occurred on 2 February 2012. Several
hand-picked
speaker 'blathered' on and on. He spoke in favor of restricting the database
to only "qualified, approved people" and not the general public and
**especially denying access to genealogists*.* A number of professional
genealogists who were signed up to speak, traveled to Washington, D.C., and
stood in line for hours in an attempt to speak in behalf of the entire
genealogical community (family historians as well as professionals), but ALL
were denied that opportunity. No rebuttal testimony was allowed either.
A father whose child recently died of cancer gave
extraordinarily moving
(and bitter) testimony before the Congressional hearing. He testified that
**genealogists** are the reason his child's Social Security # was
confiscated by a crook and used for nefarious purposes. He is a grieving
father who refuses to acknowledge that the crook's access to his child's
Social Security # is a failure of the government IRS agency, instead of a
'plot' by **genealogists.**
Rootsweb has already bowed to Congressional pressure and has
removed the
SSDI from free access. Pay-for-view sites (EX:
Ancestry.com) continue to
have the privilege of offering it at this moment in time. What else will be
blocked is anyone's guess.
For a summary of the background story on this legislation and
links to
original testimony at the Congressional hearing, see :
<
http://michaelhait.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/ssdi-hearing/
Genealogists who do not care about
the SSDI can delete this message and move
on. But do keep in mind that the proposal to close the SSDI database is only
a small part of a broader movement to remove public access to **ALL** vital
records (births, marriages, and deaths). Even though all those records are
tax-payer supported, the theory is that we the public are not entitled to
access.
If you do care about this issue of access to tax-paid public
records, there
is an online petition addressing the failure of the IRS to prevent illegal
use of Social Security #. The petition does not address the larger issue of
genealogists' access to public record but does focus on the grieving
father's circumstance, and explains how the IRS could have prevented the
current situation. This petition is sponsored by the National Genealogical
Society (NGS), the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS), the
International Assn. of Jewish Genealogical Society (IAJGS), the Assn.
of Professional Genealogists (APG), the Board for Certification of
Genealogists (BCG), and the American Society of Genea-
logists (ASG).
To read the petition and decide for yourself whether to
participate, go to
the White House website: < http:/wh.gov/khe > After reading the petition
and deciding that you do wish to make your voice heard, the White House
requires that petitioners register through a relatively simple procedure.
These additional steps for registering an opinion are irritating, but that's
the way the world works today.
I realize that some readers will delete this message as "not relevant" to
their own personal interests. Some webmasters will deem this message to be
"off topic", but in my view, this information is both relevant and on topic,
because how will we as conscientious historians be able to research families
in original records if we are denied access to these records in the future?
Regards to all,
Kathy Gunter Sullivan
Charlotte, North Carolina