Commentary on Privacy and Family Trees

Privacy is the one consistent issue that comes up almost every time I talk about family tree programs. If I even mention putting your genealogy online in a family tree, somebody in the class has an almost violent negative reaction. From my perspective as a trial attorney for 39 years and as an over average participant in the online community, I have some very strong opinions about the whole subject. I can say this with certainty: the usual perception of the extent of "privacy" is far greater and more encompassing than the reality. Privacy is one of those words everyone uses and no one really knows what it means. Most of the so-called "privacy laws" where they exist, deal with extremely limited and very narrow areas of our lives.

I often see an almost morbid preoccupation with a false idea of "privacy." This comes partly from an overly developed fear of "identity theft." I have written about the common misconceptions about identity theft many times. I can cite actual statistics from the FBI, FCC, and other U.S. government agencies showing that the incidence of true, hard-core identity theft is extremely rare. Most of what is called identity theft is actually based of "complaints" not actual crime statistics.

Genealogists as a whole seem overly preoccupied with the idea that what they do in genealogy has any impact whatsoever on either the issue of privacy or the inordinate fear of identity theft. By the way, there are huge commercial entities whose existence depends on engendering a false sense of privacy and a fear of identity theft.

Let's get some definitions going here. First, dead people do not have any right to privacy. Genealogists are and should be concerned primarily with dead people ergo, they should not have concerns about privacy except their own or the very restricted few live people they insist in including in their records. Our online world has largely erased privacy considerations from huge areas of our lives. Take Facebook for instance. If you want to get an idea about privacy, spend a few hours watching the stream of posts on Facebook. You will almost certainly see that almost any subject, no matter how personal, can be seen in a few minutes or hours spent on watching the program. Here is one sample from a current Facebook stream:

My grandson had a seizure last night/this morning they are having a hard time making it stop. They had to intubate him and he is now in the PICU.

OK, so this is a serious issue and very sad, but is it something that warrants posting on a very public website that goes out to the whole world. I could copy many such "announcements" including very personal and some very disturbing. 

Presently, I have at least a dozen or more programs that "require" a connection to my Facebook account. Most of these programs have nothing at all to do with social networking. If your son or daughter or grandson or granddaughter is regularly posting to Facebook and including "selfie" photos (if you don't know what this is, you should find out) then why are you worried to include their name on a pedigree chart, even one that is public. You are not protecting their privacy. They have already given up what little they had. You are merely acting out your own concerns and fears, no matter how groundless. Perhaps you have never seen any of the number of programs on Facebook that allow you set up a network of all of your relatives near and far. That information can be and is automatically fed into a whole variety of other databases and programs. 

If you would like some interesting reading on the subject, see https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/

Almost all family tree websites, and all those of the larger genealogy companies take the issue of showing live people very seriously. But how does a serious policy in this area make any difference if your children and grandchildren are online day and night making personal comments on Facebook?