Contrary to what Robert said, the SSDI is also available for free at
http://www.familytreelegends.com/records/ssdi
http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp?PAGE=ssdi/search_ssdi.asp&clear_form=true
and other sites.

The real threat to the SSDI is not commercialization, but rather the actions
of anti-history, anti-genealogy legislators, federal and state, who want to
prohibit access to it and most other records of births marriages, and
deaths.  Many officials argure that they are preventing identity theft and
terrorism, but what they are really doing is making it harder to identify
fraudulent uses of SSNs, making it harder to study our history and culture,
and helping the terrorists achieve their objective of destroying our culture
and open society.

For example, last year, the Maryland General Assembly unanimously passed a
law that could be interpreted as prohibiting Internet posting of the
information in the SSDI.  As far as I can tell, no historical or
genealogical organization took a formal position on the bill as it sailed
through the legislative process.


On 4/4/06, Jessica Tucker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Actually, http://ssdi.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi allows you
> to do an interactive search on the Social Security Death List, complete with
> birth and death information, SSN, and a form letter to send to the Social
> Security Administration for a copy of the original application. The first
> option on the page is an ancestry.com search, but scroll down and you'll
> see the other one.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Archives & Archivists [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
> Behalf Of Madden, Robert
> Sent: Monday, April 03, 2006 8:00 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: ARCHIVES Digest - 31 Mar 2006 to 1 Apr 2006 (#2006-89)
>
>
> I fear for the federal government's creations.  I believe you now have
> to sign up with Ancestry.com in order to access the Social Security
> Death List.  If someone knows different, please tell me.  I've seen
> copyrighted editions of Statistical Abstract - where the "copyright
> holder" has put in little explanations, cross-references, etc. and the
> average person might not be able to tell what is government-created
> (public domain) or added (not public domain.) Actually that was some
> time ago. I wonder if some court case decided those extras did not
> constitute creativity.
>    Bob
>
>

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