GenealogyBlog.com has published a commentary about an article in The Daily Sentinel about Colorado closing off access to various public records.
They posted this:
folks, I hate to say this, but I don’t hear much of an outcry from the genealogical community about the loss of so many records that are key to our research. The baby is being “thrown out with the bathwater.†We are losing access to records on a daily basis – and both major political parties are willingly participating. It’s time we became very afraid of what’s happening to our records.
I agree with them completly. One week it’s South Dakota, the next Colorado, the next Vermont. I’ve heard lawmakers mention terrorists having access to the records and I’m thinking “well why didn’t you mention this in 2001 – oh wait, you’re just doing this because now everybody else is doing this and somebody in the federal government said ‘gosh it’s a good idea, why should the public have access to these records'”.
I heard lawmakers talk about identity theft when mentioning closing off public access, and I’m thinking “meanwhile, THE IRS IS GOING TO ALLOW PREPARERS TO SELL YOUR TAX RETURNS TO THIRD PARTIES – NO IDENTITY THEFT PROBLEM THERE, AFTER ALL, THAT KIND OF THING NEVER HAPPENS IN THE MARKETING INDUSTRY.
sheesh.
This country is just so screwed up, it’s not even funny anymore. If we don’t stop this kind of crap now, who knows what the country will be like 15 or 20 years from now.
People can buy access to all kinds of information about you, and it looks like your tax returns in the not-too-distant future. Closing off Grandpa and Grandma’s birth certificates or marriage license information or whatever isn’t going to hold them up. They probably buy entire databases full of information about you or I.
Go write your representatives in Congress if you live in the US, as well as your local officials. Get your friends, family members, fellow genealogists, and people you meet on the street. Doesn’t matter if your state is impacted yet or not – it will be. The Government at all levels just keeps getting bigger and more restrictive, only because we keep allowing it to.