Thread by @ReclaimTheRecs

Did you know that some government agencies consider a photograph of a tombstone -- for a person that they know from their own records was born ~120 years ago -- is *not* a sufficient proof of death to release those same records under a Freedom of Information Law?

Read on.
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If you're researching (for genealogy, journalism, whatever) someone who worked in civil service or was licensed, you should know that you can write to gov't offices and ask for copies of their old paperwork.

Reclaim The Records board member @Alecferretti did that recently.
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Back in January, Alec wrote to the New York State Education Department (@NYSEDNews) and asked them for copies of any records they might still have about his great-great-uncle Arthur Levinson. He was a pharmacist, and as such, he had been licensed by the state many years ago.
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Alec made this request for Arthur's records using our favorite tool, a Freedom of Information request. Basically, that means Alec wrote the NYSED a letter, but he did it in a particular format and delivered it to a specific FOIL Officer address, so that they had to answer him.
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Now, this great-great-uncle Arthur-the-pharmacist was born in 1900 and died in 1973.

Alec does not have a copy of Arthur's birth certificate, because Arthur was born in Czarist era Lithuania and immigrated to the US. That record might have survived the years, or it might not.
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But more importantly, Alec does not have a copy of Arthur's death certificate, even though he died back in 1973, which is 47 years ago.

But that's not due to decades of wars and political mayhem possibly wrecking the record books.

No, *that's* due to the folks at @nycHealthy.

See, @nycHealthy, together with their pals at @NAPHSIS_US, put in place in NYC some of the strictest rules in the whole USA about public access to vital records.

Even for access to the death records of people who are, by definition, y'know, *dead*.
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These rules mean that in New York State, you can't get a death certificate copy for someone who died less than 50 years ago, and in New York City, it's up to *75 years* ago. It's ridiculous.

So we're currently suing NYC to get those rules overturned:
reclaimtherecords.org/records-reques…
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Now, some relatives can get a copy of a death certificate in NYS or NYC without waiting for the embargo period to be up -- but only if they're closely-enough related.

But NYC's rules are strict there, too, and @nycHealthy chose to disallow even *cousins* from being eligible.
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And Alec is, as mentioned, Arthur's great-great-nephew.

So the rules for NYC say he's not closely-enough related to get a copy of Arthur's death certificate. And the rules for NYC also currently say it's gonna be a 75 year embargo.

So Alec has to wait until 2048 for a copy!
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But Alec isn't even trying to get a certificate here.

He is just trying to get old pharmacist records from NYSED. More to the point, he has to get NYSED to *not* redact those records for "privacy".

And to do that, he has to prove that Arthur is really most sincerely dead.
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But how do you prove someone is really most sincerely dead to one government agency (@NYSEDNews) if another government agency (@nycHealthy) is blocking the release of their death certificate copy until 2048?

Well, luckily, there are these things called tombstones.

Except...
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Except Alec's FOIL request and his appeal just got denied by @NYSEDNews.

Part of Arthur-the-pharamicst's records were withheld, exempted, b/c @NYSEDNews has decided that even a tombstone photo is *not a sufficient proof of death* for a man that they know was born in 1900. 😒
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Here's the full text of what they wrote to Alec, the denial of his FOIL appeal asking for the full and unredacted records:
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"THE APPEAL IS DISMISSED."

@NYSEDNews has decided that a man with a birthdate ~120 years ago -- which they don't dispute, their own records include his birthdate -- could potentially be alive and thereby harmed by releasing his grades, his old address, and...that birthdate.
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And what's really gross is that one of the court cases they cite to confirm that, okay, maybe *some* very select items about dead people can be withheld under New York's FOIL is...

A FOIL case about not releasing the audio of the last phone calls of the victims of 9/11. 😐
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Yeah, @NYSEDNews really went there in their denial. They leaned on that one case -- "Matter of New York Times Co. vs. City of N.Y. Fire Department" -- which said that it's legally okay to not release those otherwise-publicly-releasable audio files, for obvious reasons.
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So, on one side, we have a long-dead pharmacist's grades, his old address, and his birthdate. And on the other side, we have the horrific raw audio of the 9/11 victims' phone calls to FDNY.

And @NYSEDNews has decided that these are equally intrusive on dead people's privacy.
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Finally, you might see in that FOIL denial that a different person's file *was* released to Alec wholly unredacted, a few months before great-great-uncle Arthur's file was redacted.

The reason for this is that with the previous person, the agency had their...
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...own internal documentation that they had died. But with Arthur, no one told the agency he'd passed on in 1973. And they're not accepting the tombstone photo. And they're not citing what they *would* accept as proof, other than a certificate that won't be open until 2048.
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So, the obvious question here: are we at RTR going to file a lawsuit about this one?

We don't know yet.

But. It sure would be interesting to finally have a legal standard established about what constitutes an *acceptable* proof of death, for purposes of New York State FOIL.
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The fact that Arthur was born around 1900 would, one would think, be prima facie evidence of his death by now, right? Well, apparently not in New York.

So let's look at how some *federal* agencies deal with similar issues about proof of death, when they deal with #FOIA.
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The Social Security Administration accepts a "death certificate, obituary, newspaper article, or police report" as acceptable proof of death of a very old person where SSA can't confirm they're dead (which is a problem for other obvious reasons).
secure.ssa.gov/apps10/poms.ns…
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(We've been asking around to confirm that the Social Security Administration would *also* accept a photo of a sufficiently old tombstone, too, but we're not 100% sure on that point. Perhaps you, Dear Reader, can confirm if that approach has worked for you?)

BUT...BUT...
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Social Security also has a "120 year rule": if someone was born 120 years ago, they are assumed to be dead, no certificate or photo or whatever required.

Sensible!

And yet that's not a standard that the state of New York is following here.
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So, are we going to sue? We don't know yet. We're thinking about it. And we're going to be contacting the New York State Committee on Open Government tomorrow, to see if they have any advice about legal standards for proof of death in lieu of access to a death certificate.
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But how dumb, how stupid, how just plain rotten is it that Alec is not going to get his own relative's unredacted files from these petty little weenies, who think a guy born in Czarist era Lithuania is surely alive, and who deny the public access because *they can*.
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This is just one story for one researcher for one relative. But the public deserves better from our government, and so does great-great-uncle Arthur, may he rest in peace.

Shit like this is why we exist as an organization. This is just one story, but we all have them.
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We'll let you know what the Committee on Open Government says about all this, and our attorney.

In the meantime, keep sending those FOIL's and appealing them too. Keep fighting the good fight, against the small and the mean and the bureaucratic.

But we repeat ourselves.
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