FREEBMD-DISCUSS-L Archives

Archiver > FREEBMD-DISCUSS > 2002-11 > 1038442559


From: Andrew Hingston <>
Subject: Re: Colin Miller - www.1837online.com
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 00:15:59 +0000
References: <000b01c2955f$065041f0$5c02c050@ronan>
In-Reply-To: <004001c2962d$ccf813e0$caea8818@earthlink.net>


At 10:58 27/11/2002 -0500, Rebecca Rogers wrote:
>if I can walk into
>any Family History Center and order a fiche of the index for say 1936 and
>then order a copy why on earth is the UK Gov't putting a 100 year rule in
>place? Or is that rule NOT in place and they are trying to get it there?

Essentially, yes, though they are proposing that quite a lot of information
on those born less than 100 years ago would be available to the public. In
practice we could end up with on-line access to everything except a few
things such as addresses and occupation (which are often of interest to
family historians). But these proposals in the registration white paper
have yet to be agreed, which is why ONS want a moratorium at present on
disclosure of information less than 100 years old.

There are a number of considerations, including the point that once you
have a computer searchable database universally available on the internet,
it becomes much easier to find out about people for bad reasons as well as
good. Yes, there can be constraints on who can access it, but as has been
pointed out it is difficult to enforce them because those with ulterior
motives are unlikely to tell the truth.

There is a problem of growing abuse of BMD information - creation of false
identities for passport or other purposes, and financial fraud (banking
institutions in the UK tend to rely on information like date of birth and
mother's maiden name to confirm identities).

There is a fair amount of public resistance to publishing private
information collected for official purposes.

Whether it is realistic to try and restrict access now to information which
is already available in so many places around the world is debatable, but
some will say that is no reason to release more.

Andrew Hingston

<http://www.amhinja.demon.co.uk>;


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