Someone Has Pissed in My Cheerios

Why have we become a nation so obsessed with privacy, while so many of us post personal information on social media websites? I must admit that the recent and proposed changes to accessing the SSDI, as well as access to social security applications (Form SS-5) make me feel as if someone has pissed in my Cheerios, and I feel compelled to write about it here. It has me depressed and pissed off because I feel like my last resort is being taken away. When I can't get the info I need because some state has restricted access to PUBLIC vital records, I almost always use the social security death index to obtain at least some of the info I could have obtained from the PUBLIC vital record. All of these restrictions, both with the SSDI and with state records, have been enacted in the name of "privacy" and "prevention of identity theft."

In July 2011, the SSA began restricting access to the parents' names listed on an SS-5 form if the number holder's date of birth is less than 100 years ago. You can still order an SS-5 form for a deceased person, but you will NOT be able to see the parents' names of the number holder, unless you have proof of death for the deceased person's parents if the deceased person was born less than 100 years ago. This often defeats the purpose of ordering the SS-5 for a genealogist who is trying to determine the parents' names based upon the SS-5 form. If you don't know the parents' names, how are you supposed to provide their proof of death?

The reason for redacting the parents' names, according to the SSA's website, is to protect an individual's privacy.  First, since when is a deceased person's parents' names considered private? The only time parents' names should be considered private is in sensitive situations, such as closed adoption cases (though I'm sure some even disagree with this). We don't consider the names of our parents private when we publish obituaries, wedding announcements, and birth announcements in newspapers. How come they are considered private on an SS-5 form?

Second, exactly whose privacy are we trying to protect? Even if this information was considered private, for a person who was born 80 years ago, their parents would be approximately 100 years old today. What are the chances that the parents are still alive? For a person born 99 years ago, their parents would be around 120 years old at the youngest. The Federal Privacy Act declares that deceased people do not have rights to privacy. Occasionally, a court case will consider the privacy rights of family members of the deceased, but this is usually reserved for extreme cases, such as when a media outlet wants to publish gruesome pictures of a person's death. I don't think the parents' names exactly qualifies as a family member's right to privacy. I mean, even if the parents' names would be considered private, I think 75 years is much more reasonable than 100 years.

Now, not only have there been restrictions on parents' names, but effective 11/1/2011, the SSA will no longer report death info obtained from protected state death records. The good news is that most death information is provided by funeral homes, family members, etc. and not state death records. Still, approximately 4.2 million entries will be removed from the SSA's Death Master File (DMF), though it's not apparent whether or not Ancestry.com has any plans to remove names from their SSDI database.

Furthermore, there is a "Keeping IDs Safe Act" in Congress right now prohibiting the sale of the DMF by the SSA. The SSA sells the DMF to companies like Ancestry.com, which it uses to publish its Social Security Death Index database. The reasoning behind this is that supposedly thieves recently obtained social security numbers from children listed in the SSDI and used them as fake dependents on their federal tax returns. Quite frankly, I really don't think this bill is going to get very far, especially considering it would most likely violate the FOIA and there have always been cases of people using deceased persons' IDs fraudulently on tax returns. This is not a new problem, but for some reason, the media has taken an interest.

What baffles me about all of this is that Ancestry.com has decided to respond by removing the SSDI from their free site, and even restricting the paid site by removing SSN's from people in the SSDI who have died in the last 10 years. I have one question: Why ten years? Why not five years or twenty years? What is the difference? Do thieves say, "Well, I am not going to take this number because this person died twenty years ago, but this one only died five years ago. I'll take that one." I don't even think people paying for the service would be thieves anyway. That would be too easy to trace.

When is all this madness going to end? Why do we think every single piece of information is private? Let's just ban all media and free speech right now. The media gives out way too much private information. When are newspapers going to quit publishing obituaries because they give out too much private information? That's where I am afraid that we are heading.  We are so concerned about privacy and scared to death that everyone is out to get us that none of us know our next-door neighbors anymore. However, at the same time, people are posting drunken pictures of themselves on social media sites. They are listing their dates and places of birth, job locations, and current residences on social media sites. I cannot tell you how many times I have used Facebook to double check a living family member's birth date or birth place. It is much easier to access someone's Facebook account than it is to order a vital record or an SS-5 application.

Also, the fact that the social security numbers of deceased persons are made public should actually help slow down identity theft. If they are made public, then anyone can have access to determine if an applicant for a loan or job or a taxpayer is using the number of a dead person. Perhaps the banking industry or the human resources groups can help us with this fight. It makes sense that if information (any information, not just SSDI info) is made public, then it makes it harder for individuals to use it for fraudulent purposes. Transparency is one of the main purposes of the FOIA. The only reason for the IRS not catching the numbers used fraudulently on tax returns besides pure laziness and strapped resources would be that one can use a deceased dependent's number on his/her tax return in the year of death. It can typically only be used in the year of death, however, so perhaps restricting the publishing of deaths in the SSDI online to one year would be reasonable.

Overall, there are always going to be people who cheat the system, no matter how many curveballs you try to put in their way. I promise that the IRS had problems with people using bogus dependents long before the Internet came along. Banishing the publication of the SSDI online because of a few cases of identity theft and leaving millions of American people without a way to trace their family heritage and learn about where they come from is unreasonable. And the parents' names of a deceased person being redacted in the name of "privacy" is just plain ridiculous.