The State is Supreme

National security is the Bush mantra and it's effects are spread out across the land in a culture altering diaspora of unknown consequence. One such change in American life is this: buried within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 is a regulation that bars most public access to birth and death certificates for 70 to 100 years. From In These Times:

A draft of the proposed regulations now causing widespread concern among state officials....reveals plans to create a vast database of vital records to be centralized in Washington, and details measures that states must implement......

The draft lays out how....town and county offices must keep the birth and death records under lock and key and report all document requests to Washington. Individuals who show up in person will still be able to obtain their own birth certificates, and in some cases, the birth and death records of an immediate relative; and “legitimate” research institutions may be able to access files. But reporters and activists won’t be allowed to fish through records; many family members looking for genetic clues will be out of luck; and people wanting to trace adoptions will dead-end. If you are homeless and need your own birth certificate, forget it: no address, no service.

Activists in Colorado already know what it is like when states bar access to vital records. For years, they fought the Cotter Corporation, claiming that its uranium mining operations were killing residents and workers.....the activists tried to access death records, only to be told that it was illegal in this closed-record state. An editorial in Colorado’s Longmont Daily Times-Call lamented, “If there’s a situation that makes the case for why death certificates should be available to the public, it is th[is] Superfund area.”

One more brick out of the foundations of freedom and liberty. Big Brother is getting stronger everyday while people sit by, acquiescent. Register and vote freedom back into American life.
Posted on The Human Stain