Information Is Power

[Guest guest]

(Buzzflash)

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. 2/18

 

 

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2488/

 

February 14, 2006

Information Is Power

By Terry J. Allen

 

 

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.

 

Activists in Colorado already know what it is like when states bar

access to vital records. For years, they fought the Cotter

Corporation, claiming that its uranium mining operations were killing

residents and workers. Unwilling to rely on the health department,

which they claimed had a " cozy " relationship with the polluters, the

activists tried to access death records, only to be told that it was

illegal in this closed-record state. An editorial in Colorado's

Longmont Daily Times-Call lamented, " If there's a situation that makes

the case for why death certificates should be available to the public,

it is th[is] Superfund area. "

 

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. As for terrorism,

all the 9/11 perpetrators had valid identification.

 

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. Each year, Vermont's 246 towns distribute their

vital statistics to all residents. " It's the first place everybody

goes in the Town Report, " says state archivist Gregory Sanford. " Who

was born, who died, who got married, who had a baby and wasn't married. "

 

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.