How far should we go in protecting the privacy of living individuals?
I just added details from an obituary to the profile of that deceased person. However, the obit names children and grandchildren, who are almost certainly all still living. Is the only privacy afforded to the living (through their Death status) in making their profiles private?
It seems "paradoxical" that we can apparently publicly reveal details of living persons in Family Tree, as long as their profiles (if created) remain in private spaces.
In my early days of using Family Tree, I was advised that no mention should be made of living children against the profiles of the deceased, which always seemed rather odd when the attached census records clearly provided such detail! Has FamilySearch's advice changed in recent years?
Answers
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Paul, did you attach a copy of the obituary, either as a URL or as an image in memories? Or did you simply add the living profiles based on the information in the obituary? I think the best answer may depend on how the information was included in the FSFT.
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So far, I just added details of the contents of the obituary as a Note item against the deceased person's profile. Now you've made me think that I might have to take it down in case there might be a breach of copyright (it came from an item in a Canadian newspaper). So maybe best if I just placed the URL against the note and that would deal with the issue of displaying the identities of the living relatives, too. Regardless, I was looking for some general advice on how to deal with such records within Family Tree.
As I say, I once read advice (from an FS employee) that it shouldn't even be mentioned (on the deceased's profile) that they had relatives who were still alive - even without naming them. But the situation with adding recent census sources (for example) makes that seem a bit silly.
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I feel censuses are different from newspaper mentions. The publication of censuses is subject to transparent rules (even if to me, after years of working with GDPR requirements, it feels odd to see them on public view while the people listed are potentially alive). Newspapers are simply not subject to such rules, so I wouldn't expose newspaper references to living people except (as suggested above) indirectly via URLs. I do however have a private, local family tree in RootsMagic that refers extensively to living people, including via clipped newspaper obits.
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Thank you for that advice. I definitely now intend to take away the wording of the obit and just leave the URL.
I do seem to remember, though, a member of Community once implying that it should be okay to include this kind of information in Family Tree, since it was the living relatives that had chosen to make their details publicly available by allowing publication in a newspaper.
On the issue of census records, here in the UK the "100 year rule" obviously makes for far fewer problems than in the US - especially when so many individuals have probably been added to Family Tree (from work on, say, the 1950 census) as "Deceased", when they are actually still very much alive!
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I don't think people should assume that being happy to be mentioned in a newspaper means you are happy for that information to be reused for a completely different purpose.
(A key principle of Data Protection is not to reuse information for a purpose other than that for which it was stored.)
The other day I saw a profile marked deceased with a cheery note on it from a friend of the person saying they were still alive! Words fail me.
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When I extract an obituary, I try to protect the living to a degree, noting that I've edited the contents to protect the living. I'll mention "6 great-grandchildren" without any names, for example.
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On the one hand, if it's publicized, that means it's public. On the other hand, as Mandy says, narrow purpose is a key principle of data protection.
Many of the obituaries I've dealt with have been "limited time only" access, so my notes on the attached source are all that I can now see. This creates something of a quandary: is it "fair use" to include a full transcription? If I privatize or leave out some of it, does that change the copyright questions?
The privacy angle is somewhat simpler: I feel that it is sufficient to simply omit the names of likely-living relatives from any public reference I make to the obituary. That way, I leave all data protection responsibilities with the record custodian.
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Whilst I highlighted this particular example (of an obituary) as this is something I had encountered today (believe it or not, personally for the first time) I was also hoping to open up a discussion on the wider issues - involving public records that are open for all to see, in spite of them containing some borderline-confidential information on living persons.
Incidentally, there is an official website in the U.K. that provides details of registered U.K. companies and their directors, where I was shocked to find the dates of birth of the directors.
I know FamilySearch has to consider privacy laws covering countries around the globe, but the decision making process whereby profiles of the living are not allowed to be displayed publicly - but elsewhere on FamilySearch a great deal of that personal information is freely available - has always seemed to be a confusing issue to me.
It has been advised in the past that individuals could (can) request their personal data to be removed from the website, in spite of the fact that it would clearly remain on government sponsored and other www addresses. I don't know if this option is still open to those who object to, say, FamilySearch displaying their openly-public birth, marriage or residence details, so feel it a shame it is unlikely a FamilySearch employee will come here to clarify the situation. Maybe there is an existing article on the general subject on the FS website - if so, I would be grateful for the URL.
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(I was adding my latest post at the about same time as you were posting yours.)
In response to your comment:
"Many of the obituaries I've dealt with have been "limited time only" access…"
As a matter of interest, the obituary I came across today was from a Winnipeg newspaper, and at the bottom of which was the comment: "As published…on May 28, 2008", although the page might not have been online all that time, of course. ( And it did refer to a 2008 death.)
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Not exactly what you were asking for, @Paul W, but this article is possibly relevant:
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