
Lawsuit claims Ancestry.com gets preferential access to New York public archives - wooboo
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/ancestry-com-reclaim-the-records-new-york-lawsuit
======
cwyers
If you read the article, Reclaim The Records filed a FOIL (NY state version of
FOIA) request for the records, which were stored on microfilm. The state
quoted $150k for the request -- you still need to pay to have copies made. The
group thought the state's quote was too large. Then Ancestry.com comes in,
pays for the microfilm to be digitized, and the state tells the group
"nevermind, we can do it for free now."

And this is the evidence that bad things are going on, somehow. The records
group got the copies faster than if Ancestry.com hadn't gotten involved, and
didn't have to pay for the.

~~~
Asparagirl
Hi, I’m Brooke Schreier Ganz, founder and president of Reclaim The Records.
Your comment is misleading as to the substance of this lawsuit and the issue
at hand. I would urge you to read this backstory, and the actual lawsuit text:

[https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/freedom-of-information-
req...](https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/freedom-of-information-
request/reclaim-the-records-vs-new-york-state-department-of-health/)

and

[https://us11.campaign-
archive.com/?u=5f700fdc65a51d3813e67da...](https://us11.campaign-
archive.com/?u=5f700fdc65a51d3813e67dab2&id=cdcda2eb9e)

The short version: we had many onerous requirements put upon us by the New
York State Department of Health when we tried to get the records through FOIL,
only ONE of which was a crazy-inflated $152,000 price tag _that had nothing to
do with the actual cost of digitizing the microfiche_. The state made up the
price. This is illegal under FOIL’s requirement that a requestor pay only the
actual costs of digitization. In the links above, you can read the story of
how we on our own calculated the actual costs, and provided multiple price
comparisons from commercial firms and from the National Archives (NARA), which
were a tiny fraction of that inflated estimate.

Getting the records for free after a seventeen month long fight was
unexpectedly awesome. But apparently-preferential treatment by government
agencies for commercial entities instead of non-profit or individual records
requestors is really disturbing. We’re trying to figure out what happened and
why. And that’s where this lawsuit, for copies of agency e-mails and contracts
and meeting notes and such, is important.

~~~
nowarninglabel
Hi Brooke, one thing that isn't clear from reading the links you provided, did
Ancestry pay the fee requested by the state? From what I can tell, you refused
to pay the fee (rightly or wrongly, I have no ability to assess the cost
quoted to you). But if Ancestry paid it, would that not explain why their
request was fulfilled first?

~~~
Asparagirl
Hi! That’s exactly what we’d like to know! Our lawsuit is asking the New York
State Department of Health for copies of _“all correspondence, e-mails,
proposals, drafts, notes, agreements, contracts, meetings and calendar
entries, phone logs, meeting minutes, budget items, receipts, vendorization
forms or data, bids, evaluation materials, Freedom of Information Law (FOIL)
records requests and their associated correspondence and any appeals, and any
other documentation or communications between the New York State Department of
Health and Ancestry.com, or such materials within the New York State
Department of Health about Ancestry.com. "_

Basically, we’re asking NYS DOH “what happened here?”

So here’s the thing: under New York’s law, either the state can quote you the
actual costs of making the copies and you then pay it (paper photocopies are
capped at $0.25/page, other media must be actual costs of duplication) OR the
requestor can physically make the copies themselves, onsite, during business
hours. Using methods of duplication like a cellphone camera (flash turned off
and battery-powered) has been held by the state Committee on Open Government
(COOG) in their Advisory Opinions on the law, to be totally free.

So initially we asked the state for a cost estimate for these microfiche and
they pulled one out of their ass, $152,000 for what should have been a few
thousand dollars at most (see lawsuit text for the estimate calculations). OR
we could just make the microfiche scans ourselves onsite, and that should have
been free.

So we were willing to do option B, make the copies. But the state made us jump
through all kinds of hoops to prove that the magical microfiche machine was
high quality, that we would do it hand-fed instead of sheet-fed, that we work
around their employees’ schedule, and so on. We said yes to all of that.

And then blammo, 800 lb gorilla company gets the records first, literally
using our own words to do it.

So either Ancestry paid the fee, or Ancestry took Option B, as we were going
to do, and did the work themselves. As per their PR Department in this
BuzzFeed article, they did the work themselves.

But then they’re a for-profit company, acting as a de-facto vendor for the
state. So shouldn’t there be a contract for the work?

~~~
privateSFacct
Folks - this is what makes government nervous. You have irreplacable records,
and then a group comes in and considers all the rules "stupid" and "silly" and
calls the microfiche machine "magical".

I don't think folks realize how risk averse government is. Literally, they
probably use ONE brand of machine they KNOW works to deal with these records
that go back over 100+ years. This is not some big conspiracy, this is
literally how government works.

They've got an outfit come in, no budget, unwilling to pay for anything, can't
be bothered to do things right. And then they get a corporation in like
ancestry, probably can point to tons of experience doing exactly this, with
lots of references, with deep enough pockets that if they screw up they can be
persued to make it right.

Seriously, I've contracted with the goverment, the references thing alone is
100% how they operate, they want to see that you've done this same thing you
will do for them 3x without problems for other agencies they can call up.

Seriously, if you did a high quality product, insured, check all the boxes,
are totally 100% on all the "stupid" paperwork, the govt will fall over in
love with you and you will have more work then you can handle, especially if
you do it for free, and have 3 other places you've done it for who like your
work.

~~~
Asparagirl
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that we are a company or were
bidding for a government contract. We are not and were not: governments are
_required_ to provide copies of public records like these, or else _required_
to allow us access.

We’ve sued and won settlements in Freedom of Information Lawsuits like this
one three times in the past four years (and won attorneys fees twice!), and
currently have five more cases pending in various jurisdictions, both state
and federal. Your apparent experiences as a paid or contracted vendor are not
quite analogous to this situation.

~~~
privateSFacct
You seem to be under the mistaken impression, that burdened under 100's
(literally) of rules, the govt can do a one off special project like this for
$3,000. Seriously, I've fought the goverment too, and won, on some stupid
requirements that were explicitly revoked at higher levels of govt but hadn't
filtered down.

That one issue (went through chain to their legal team, and back a few times)
cost more than $3,000 of the governments time.

You are constantly making the claim that the government is charging 50x what
it should cost. You are wrong. Period. I've paid a relative fortune to have
the government run a select query on a database. And they still messed it up,
I could probably have run it in 30 seconds.

If scanning records is something you do, then I would STRONGLY suggest rather
than trying to get the government to figure out how to scan records, you,
without calling the rules silly, develop some experience scanning the records
yourself. If you offer to scan, with experience, insurance, good equipment etc
and make the stuff available for free - you will be welcomed in many places.

Now you are suing because they gave you the records free that someone else
either paid the govt to prepare (unlikely - that would have been a SLOW
process) or prepared themselves and gave a copy to the government (which was
probably not required)? I find that pathetic. NY did a good thing by having
the first requestor make available a copy for others.

~~~
matthewmacleod
With reference to the last paragraph, the point is that nobody seems to know
exactly what happened here and something seems a bit fishy. Isn’t it
reasonable to follow this up and find out what happened?

------
Asparagirl
If you enjoyed reading this story, which is about our fifth Freedom of
Information lawsuit, you might also enjoy reading about our eighth and newest
lawsuit, which we just filed against the parent agency of the New York City
Municipal Archives a few days ago:

[https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/records-
request/22/](https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/records-request/22/)

Teaser: “Welcome to the single stupidest lawsuit that our organization has
ever had to file.

Alternately, we could subtitle this story _let’s all gather round and watch
the NYC Department of Records light taxpayer money on fire!_ ”

------
zzleeper
Never heard of reclaim the records until now. What they are doing is amazing!

I was even moved to donate, even though I have no US ancestry ("Donation
Confirmation Thank you for supporting Reclaim The Records!")

~~~
andrewem
Reclaim the Records has done amazing work. HN user Asparagirl is the founder
and runs it
([https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Asparagirl](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Asparagirl)).

~~~
Asparagirl
_waves hello_

------
squirrelicus
Ancestry developed relationships with many archival sources for a damn good
reason. They have developed non trivial processes, equipment, and trained
staff that treat the records with care. When I worked there it was a badge of
honor for their document processing division that they were the only entity
essentially allowed to just walk into the National Archives and take whatever
they wanted to digitize, because they were known and trusted to return the
extraordinarily fragile documents unharmed. Reputation matters. Presumably the
cost that the plaintiff incurred was a form of insurance or "are you really
seriously sure you have the capital to treat this stuff with care?"

I am not a lawyer and I might be making it all up.

------
NoblePublius
I’m willing to wager Ancestry does digitization better, faster and cheaper
than any non profit would.

~~~
andrewem
The counterexample to your claim is FamilySearch.org, which worked with
Reclaim the Records on digitizing a set of records. (It's a nonprofit run by
the LDS church, which is a behemoth in genealogy records.)

~~~
dsiegel2275
Couldn't upvote this enough. I have done significant genealogical research
over the last 6 or 7 years, using primarily Ancestry and FamilySearch.org.
FamilySearch, particularly for non U.S. records, offers access to an order of
magnitude more resources than Ancestry, though not all of them are digitally
indexed. Ancestry, with its larger budget, seems to have invested heavily in
digitizing and making available a small subset of commonly used resources,
resources that will enable more casual users to make quick progress. So
records like the 1940 U.S. Census and state-based death certificates (usually
up to 1960) are digitized, and thus made widely available to keep and draw new
subscribers.

------
altitudinous
"suspects".

I did not read the article because of this.

The internet slanders many based on only suspicion.

I suspect that we are not alone in the universe. I suspect that Elvis might
still be alive. But I have no proof.

Get some proof.

I'm not going to write some article stating Elvis is still alive and pass it
off as fact.

~~~
jhall1468
The article explicitly states they are doing to get information as to how
Ancestry was so promptly serviced, and for how much.

They are trying to get some proof. That's the purpose of the lawsuit. You
should try reading the articles from now on.

~~~
altitudinous
Trying to get proof is absolutely NOT proof.

I'm not going to read articles where someone has made something up.

You may as well start preparing for the forthcoming zombie apocalypse.

~~~
jhall1468
Trying to get proof is called Discovery and is quite literally one of the key
points in filing a lawsuit. You can't argue something invalid because it
doesn't have proof when the entire purpose of the lawsuit is to _get_ proof.

