Esther wrote:
Ancestry stated they would follow privacy for all living people.
Pat replies:
That statement is simply not true. Ancestry makes it quite clear that they *DO* publish information on the living. Please see the Privacy Statement at
http://ancestry.com/legal/privacy.htm, which states:
"Posts contributed by our members to message boards and other community areas may include information on the living. While we advise our members to be sensitive to privacy issues, we have no control over the content of these posts...
"We do republish databases that contain published information on the living, such as white pages, people finder directories and some birth, death and marriage records. The information in these databases has been gathered from public records released by governmental and other agencies, and is available elsewhere, often on the Internet.
Esther wrote:
IF your name is seen and or any siblings and or cousins, and or any living relatives with parents. IF the middle names are included.
IF other information is included THIS cannot be found
publicly. NOR does ancestry have the right to post and let it be seen!!!
Pat replies:
Privacy law in the U.S. derives primarily from the fourth amendment to the Constitution which protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures. NOTE the qualifier, "unreasonable".
In 1890, U.S. Supreme
Court Justices Samuel Warren and Louis
Brandeis wrote a now famous article for the
Harvard Law Review regarding the right of privacy and/or the "right to be left alone".
http://www.lawrence.edu/fast/boardmaw/Privacy_brand_warr2.ht...The article was written in protest of the sensational journalistic practices of the period where the most intimate details of a person's life were being published in the newspapers of the period. However, even though they roundly denounced those practices, the limitations to journalistic license they proposed included two important exceptions, i.e.
1) The right to privacy does not prohibit any publication of matter which is of public or general interest.
2) The right to privacy ceases upon the publication of the facts by the individual, or with his consent.
Those exceptions are a fair statement of the general state of the law today, i.e.
There is no protection for information that either is a matter of public record or was voluntarily disclosed in a public place. Please see attorney Ronald Standler's article at
http://www.rbs2.com/privacy.htmAs Justice
Stewart said in the opinion in
KATZ v. UNITED STATES, 389 U.S. 347 (1967):
"What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection."
In other words, you can claim your *name* is private, ONLY if you (or an agent acting on your behalf) has never given it out to anyone.
If your birth was recorded as required by law, it is public.
If your birth announcement appeared in a newspaper, it is public.
If you obtained a marriage license as required by law, it is public.
If your marriage was announced in a newspaper, it is public
If your name appeared in a newspaper article or obituary, it is public
If your name appears in the census, it is public.
If your name appears in a phone book, it is public.
etc. and etc.
Truly private information is protected by law, e.g. medical info, financial info, your Social Security number. But unless you have lived as a hermit, and never shared your name with anyone, your name is not "private".
Pat
