The Hartford Courant has an article from The Chicago Tribune, How Much Privacy Have We Lost? (which I couldn’t find on the Tribune’s site), by Eric Benderoff and Jon Van, about just how much privacy we have lost in this day and age. It’s a two-page article and worth a read - even as we are happy the internet can help companies provide incredible amounts of genealogy information, they are also providing incredible amounts of personal information about living individuals.

With all of the talk lately of states trying to close off public access to many records, we have this glimmer of good news - The Associated Press/Newsday are reporting that New Jersey has designated millions of dollars for the preservation of public records and archives. All 21 counties and 40 municipalities are set to receive the money, which can be used for everything from new employees designated for the preservation, new equipment, duplication services, and training.

Kate Trotter has an article in the Quesnel Cariboo Observer, Become part of history through census, that discusses the ongoing debate in Canada over allowing people to hold back their 2006 Census information from future generations. To be more precise, Canadians can opt out of having their census information released in 2098 (the normal 92 year cycle), and genealogists are working to insure that they realize the impact this would have.

An article from Elizabeth M. Gillespie, for the Associated Press, Panel vows to fight for access to records, gets into an issue that is going to be cropping up a lot more as time goes by, access to public records. The article is about the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Freedom of Information Committee, and their fight to keep access open.

The Durham Region News has an article by Jeff Hayward,
Choose ‘yes’ on Census, urges group , that is pushing Canadians to check off ‘Yes’ on releasing their census information in 92 years.

Recently I mentioned that George G. Morgan’s ‘Along Those Lines’ column moved off of Ancestry.com and over to his own blog, and that he was free to comment on anything and everything. I misrepresented an article he wrote about genealogy rights, Ancestry.com, and government records (i.e. government restrictions on records).

There was a very good reason why he wasn’t able to write about the issue in his column, and he’s offered his thoughts and a correction of my perception in a follow-up comment here at RandomGenealogy.com

I’ve been very busy the past few days, and didn’t realize that when Ancestry.com updated their site and moved a lot of their daily/weekly news and columns into their Family History Circle blog, that one of the changes they made - they dropped George G. Morgan’s ‘Along Those Lines’ column, one of the better written columns on their site.

Have no fear, he has started his own blog at ahaseminars.livejournal.com.

You can still read his older columns (they go back almost eight years) at Ancestry.com.

He has a very important column this week, and normally I don’t like to do large excerpts, but this was very interesting, at least the circumstances surrounding it. Once you read it, one might conclude that it’s a good thing that he’s writting his column on a site he controls:

Good editorial from Keith Jensen, Associate Publisher of the Madison Daily Leader, about South Dakota officials closing off public records - Editorial: State officials rushed to judgment on open records.