Reclaim The Records board member @Alecferretti did that recently.
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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 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.
Even for access to the death records of people who are, by definition, y'know, *dead*.
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So we're currently suing NYC to get those rules overturned:
reclaimtherecords.org/records-reques…
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But NYC's rules are strict there, too, and @nycHealthy chose to disallow even *cousins* from being eligible.
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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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Well, luckily, there are these things called tombstones.
Except...
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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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@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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A FOIL case about not releasing the audio of the last phone calls of the victims of 9/11. 😐
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And @NYSEDNews has decided that these are equally intrusive on dead people's privacy.
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The reason for this is that with the previous person, the agency had their...
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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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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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secure.ssa.gov/apps10/poms.ns…
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BUT...BUT...
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Sensible!
And yet that's not a standard that the state of New York is following here.
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Shit like this is why we exist as an organization. This is just one story, but we all have them.
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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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