Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21^st Century
By Simson Garfinkel

O'Reilly & Associates, 2000

Reviewed by Damsel Plum * bq@bastards.org

We live in an age in which technology allows governments, corporations and private citizens to easily identify, monitor and categorize our personal lives.  The degree to which this infringes on our right to privacy depends on how these activities curtail our personal autonomy: our ability to act independently, to avoid harassment, to access personal information.

A recurring theme in Database Nation is the contrast between organizations' ability to compile personal data and the individual's ability to access and modify that data.  We learn the history and evolution of how organizations keep track of groups of people.  How they categorize us, be it in credit history, medical or marketing databases, determines how we will be treated by the various agencies made privy to this information. Sinister as this may sound, these databases are generally compiled for benign purposes.  Thanks to over-zealous information-gathering and inevitable imperfections in systems, egregious violations of personal autonomy can and do result.  Garfinkel chronicles dozens of typical instances from the familiar credit report snafu to the tragic health insurance lockout.  Along the way we are regaled with a lively, humorously recounted history of the census, social security, fingerprinting, video-monitoring and a variety of emerging technologies which can either simplify our lives or ruinously invade our privacy.

Support for adoptee rights comes from Simson Garfinkel's argument that rendering one's personal records inaccessible violates an adoptee's right to privacy, and thus personal autonomy.  Parallels from medical records access provide a frightening perspective on what adoptees as citizens are up against, but also hold forth hope. Our struggle is shared with the millions of non-adopted citizens worldwide who are unable to access their own medical records. As of 1997 only 22 states in the United States have passed laws granting patients the right to access their personal medical records and 7 of these stipulate only partial access.  As with the struggle for adoptee rights, some states have passed conditional legislation which limits access to hospital records only, or access through an attorney. 

A possible reason behind the lack of records access not mentioned in Database Nation is limited industry liability. Couldn't laws be passed which simultaneously opened access and limited liability?  The problem is that neither the medical industry nor the adoption industry want to open a can of worms that could result in bad press for their services, regardless of any prospective limitation on litigation.  Bad press will result in fewer clients for those with bad records.  Industries (e.g. the tobacco industry),have been known to deliberately keep their clients in the dark, reserving the right to behave however they please with impunity. 

The subchapter on adoption, "The Right to Your Past" contains some confusing statements, such as that adoption records have been sealed since the 1930's in the U.S. In actuality, states started sealing adoptee records as early as 1917 (MN), and the 1920's (WI: '29), and many states first sealed adoptee records in the 1970's and later (AZ: '72, TX, MT: '73, CT: '74, VA: '76, LA: '77, PA: '84, AL: '91)  While Garfinkel may have been making a general statement about the average length of time adoption records have been sealed to adoptees in the United States, it is important from an activist perspective to realize that this has been an ongoing, sporadic process which can be reversed.  Another relevant distinction would be the fact that laws sealing records to the general public preceded laws sealing records to their rightful owners.  The latter violates adoptee privacy and autonomy while the former does not. 

The adoption chapter also confuses closed adoption with sealed records.  Garfinkel repeatedly invokes the Late-Discovery-Adoptee (LDA) phenomenon as the epitome of closed adoption's sin. This, ostensibly because he thinks an end to closed adoption would result in an end to the LDA phenomenon.  The mistake here is confusing access to identifying and background information with access to the actual people involved, and to relationships. While the phrase "open adoption" is never used, this is the generally-understood opposite of closed adoption.  If we truly want to focus on access to information (rather than access to visitation or co-parenting), the proper terms would be "identified" and "anonymous" adoption.  Records are still permanently sealed to the adoptee in sealed records states where open adoption takes place and many open adoptions are subsequently closed.  Closed adoption can still be an option for parents under an open records system when birthparents choose not to have contact or when parental rights are terminated due to neglect or abuse.  If the Late Discovery Adoptee phenomenon is what you really want to stop, more effective means would be enacting laws like Argentina's where it is illegal not to tell an adopted child s/he is adopted.  Another countermeasure might be birthparent access to the amended birth certificate of the adult adoptee, although this would not necessarily stop adoptive parents from withholding a child's adoptive status. 

Supporters of permanent secrecy in adoption such as the adoption industry lobbying group National Council for Adoption (NCFA) propose that adoptee records should remain sealed for the life of the adoptee (or forever).  They claim this protects the birthmother from the child ever returning into her life and the adoptee is protected from a birthmother who changes her mind and tries to reclaim the child. The basis of the former argument is that birthmothers were promised "confidentiality" and that an adoptee being able to access his personal birth and adoption file would create a violation of the birthparent's alleged privacy rights. While only the NCFA is quoted in Database Nation, organizations as far afield as local branches of the ACLU and Planned Parenthood have espoused similar arguments.  Since the publication of Database Nation the courts in both Oregon and Tennessee have upheld that sealed adoption records cannot be construed as providing permanent anonymity from one's offspring and that no such interpretation of "privacy" is viable.  This privacy argument is further weakened by fact that individuals and organizations have long been able to search for and find all manner of people for any number of purposes, from genealogy to targeted marketing, as evidenced throughout Database Nation. 

"The Internet is going to make confidentiality a joke, in terms of the ability of people to find each other" an adoption agency worker states at the end of Database Nation's chapter on adoption.  Considering the amazing array of personal information already in the public domain about each and every one of us, the argument that birthparents should expect permanent anonymity from their offspring becomes even more absurd.  Read this book, not only to get educated about the Database Nation we live in, but also to gain some perspective the next time anyone claims open records for adult adoptees violates a birthparent's "privacy".

A minor disappointment lies in the fact that the Bastard Nation website is mentioned in the text as a source for information, but in the web index the Bastards Nation website's url is not referenced. Other adoption resources with considerably less information on adoptee rights and the LDA phenomenon are referenced instead. 

Garfinkel's take on adoptee rights is informed, compassionate, and refreshing.  Sealed records is presented as "marketing" and the ultimate example of injustice to one's right to personal information is embodied in the Late Discovery Adoptee phenomenon. While no LDAs are directly quoted, their stories are mentioned indirectly, especially as a rebuttal to the claim that mutual consent reunion registries are a better solution to the need for open records than access itself. Bastard Nation Co-founder Shea Grimm's story is told and other adoptees are quoted on both information rights and the institutionalized shame often present in adoption.  Highly recommended.

Order Database Nation now from Amazon.com.

*****************************************************

Damsel Plum is Co-founder of Bastard Nation.  She lives with her husband, sons and a small menagerie in Northern California. Her website is www.plumsite.com