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...

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...

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...

The United States Treasury Department's Acting Deputy Inspector General for Audit just released a lengthy report about the extent of income tax fraud in the U.S. The audit was conducted as a direct result of the Senate and House hearings we have been watching over this past year. Their findings are stunning. You can read the report here. Surely the subcommittee chairs will move their legislation (H.R. 6205 and S. 3432) out of committee with a favorable report with the support of the audit results. Between 2010 and 2012, the fraud more than doubled from 440,581 instances to 1,125,634 instances "meeting the characteristics of confirmed identity theft cases." In 2011, these returns amount to $5,221,018,184 in potentially fraudulant payments. Much of this fraud is apparently generated by criminal groups. It is significantly limited geographically. The report provides the following table. The addresses in the table are unique residential addresses. Five homes...

Blog Posting from Sharon Sergeant, member of the Civil Records Committee: It might be the dog days of summer, and the last few months of the current two-year Congressional session, but we are still seeing new legislation being introduced. The latest, sponsored by Rep. Richard Nugent of Florida, condenses previous bills that included closure of the Social Security Death Index (Death Master File or DMF) into a new bill, H.R. 6205. It was introduced on July 26th and referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means. The full text of the new bill can be found at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr6205ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr6205ih.pdf or http://tinyurl.com/8uq9kos  The head of the Senate committee dealing with this issue also filed a new bill, S. 3432, which you can read at http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/auditreports/2012reports/201242080fr.html These bills have the least restrictive wording on closure of the Death Master File. The DMF (which genealogists know as the SSDI) would be closed for two...

We are soliciting your input. Have you ever been denied records by any state simply because you are not a resident of that state? It recently came to our attention here at the Massachusetts Genealogical Council that some states have their own Freedom of Information Acts, but that these are designed to restrict records access. With this restriction in place, a hypothetical situation would be that a reporter for the New York Times or the Chicago Tribune or the Boston Globe would be unable to access the records. What is true for reporters is true also for genealogists and historians. Delaware law Chapter 100, Section 10003 (a), restricts access to any citizen of the State: All public records shall be open to inspection and copying by any citizen of the State during regular business hours by the custodian of the records for the appropriate public body. Virginia also restricts records access...

At 3:00 pm Thursday afternoon, 10 May 2012, in Cincinnati, Ohio, RPAC met at the National Genealogical Society’s annual convention. On behalf of MGC, I attended as a Massachusetts liaison. What is RPAC? The Records Preservation and Access Committee is a three-person panel with an advisory board. The three panelists are delegates from the Federation of Genealogical Societies, the National Genealogical Society, and the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies. About a dozen people sit as advisors, but the bulk of the work and the bulk of the strategy comes from the three panelists: David Rencher, AG, CG, the Genealogist at FamilySearch in Utah; Fred Moss from Texas; and Jan Meisels Allen from California. Together for many years they have provided advice to state genealogical societies whenever access or preservation issues arise. Last year they supported our efforts to stop a bill that would have closed records back to 1840. This...

Remember when we all heard about a subcommittee hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives about closing the SSDI? There were four bills regarding this, three in the House and one in the U.S. Senate. That Senate bill (S.1534) comes up for a hearing this week. At 10:00 AM Eastern time, on Tuesday, March 20th, the Senate’s subcommittee on Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth has a hearing titled, “Tax Fraud by Identity Theft, Part 2: Status, Progress, and Potential Solutions.” THE HEARING The website for this subcommittee is multipurpose. Before the hearing you can use it to learn who will be testifying and how to submit your own written testimony. During the hearing (10:00 AM Eastern time), you can go to this page to access a streaming video of the hearing itself. The page is: http://finance.senate.gov/hearings/hearing/?id=8c908260-5056-a032-525c-4f663b8d35f8 THE BILL Senate bill S.1534 is sponsored by Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who...

What follows is the text of the letter I sent to the subcommittee whose hearing two weeks ago did not permit genealogists to testify in person. This is my personal letter which I submitted as a result of my work and my life. It does not represent the Mass. Gen. Council's opinion and was not pre-approved in any way. Today was the last day to submit testimony online. Did you submit testimony? Have you contacted your own Congressman or Senator about this? Now is the time to do that! Please let us know in the comments what you've been doing to make your own opinions and your voice heard. Barbara Jean Mathews Certified Genealogist*Post Office Box 399Lexington, MA 02420 February 16, 2012 Testimony Submitted to theHearing on Accuracy and Uses of the Social Security Administration’s Death Master File    Dear Mr. Johnson and Subcommittee Members,  I am offering this testimony as...

U.S. Congressman Sam Johnson (TX) submitted a bill on 18 November 2011 called the “Keep IDs Safe Act.”[1] It was given the number H.R.3475.[2] As Rep. Johnson is the chairperson of the Social Security subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, this bill was immediately scheduled for a hearing before his subcommittee. That hearing took place last week. It was delayed by a few minutes so that at least one other member of the committee could be present before testimony was taken. The testimony was limited to only those people whom Rep. Johnson had pre-approved. When researching bills here in Massachusetts, I keep a three-column Excel spreadsheet. Column 1 contains the part of the Massachusetts General Laws which describe vital records where each paragraph is in a different row/cell down the column. Column 2 contains the text of the bill where each Section of the bill is in the...

We are pleased to have a guest posting from Trish Hackett Nicola, CG, of Seattle, Washington. She posted this information on the Members Only list of the Association of Professional Genealogists and has given us permission to republish it. Trish writes: This is what the FTC says about identity theft. It doesn't mention the SSDI. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/idtheft//consumers/about-identity-theft.html "How do thieves steal an identity? Identity theft starts with the misuse of your personally identifying information such as your name and Social Security number, credit card numbers, or other financial account information. For identity thieves, this information is as good as gold. Skilled identity thieves may use a variety of methods to get hold of your information, including: Dumpster Diving. They rummage through trash looking for bills or other paper with your personal information on it. Skimming. They steal credit/debit card numbers by using a special storage device when processing your card. Phishing....