KEY POINTS:
The idea that a criminal could assume your identity and cause mayhem in your name sends a shiver down the spine. Imagine discovering that somebody is trying to fraudulently obtain a passport in your name - or that someone is trying to falsely claim welfare benefits using the identity of one of your loved ones.
With this in mind, the Government is pushing to significantly restrict public access to births, deaths and marriages registers, in the hope that taking away one open source of personal information will make it more difficult for opportunistic fraudsters.
At present, getting hold of details such as a person's birth date, marriage information and checking for brothers and sisters is as simple as going to the local Births, Deaths and Marriages office and looking for it.
If a stranger had been in this week and asked for your details, it is highly likely the details would have been handed over and you would never know.
But despite concern about identity fraud, Parliament is facing an uphill battle to convince many of its colleagues that the clampdown is necessary.
Leading the charge against the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill are some unlikely allies - genealogists, media representatives, historians and writers, and on their behalf the Green, National and United Future political parties.
At the heart of the revolt is the fact that the same records which can be used with criminal intent are also used regularly for legitimate research purposes.
The records are an official source of information that can be relied on by family tree researchers, biographers and journalists.
Lobbying of politicians has been intense in recent weeks, and with a parliamentary select committee due to begin hearing oral submissions on the controversial legislation, a storm is brewing.
Internal Affairs Minister Rick Barker has met representatives of some groups opposing the access clampdown and told them he does not intend to stop people from conducting research into their families.
But when it comes to somebody else's family, it is a different story. "There is a balance to be struck between the rights of individuals to their privacy and the access to information," Barker told the Weekend Herald.
"Individuals are required to hand this information over to the state, and I think most New Zealanders would be of the opinion that the state has a responsibility to protect it."
The minister said a lot of information was on the registers which people would regard as personal and private, including details of a how a person died. "There will be occasions when this is family information that they might not want all of the world to have access to."
The Government's decision to restrict access to birth, death and marriage registers is partly the result of a high profile case in 2004, in which two suspected Israeli spies were caught trying to get a passport using the birth certificate of an Auckland tetraplegic with cerebral palsy.
Just three months after the spy scandal, the Government decided to put on hold largely technical changes to the Births, Deaths, and Marriages Registration Act until a review of public access to the registers could be completed.
The review drew together the advice of various government departments and agencies, but did not include public consultation.
According to background documents, the review was also triggered by advice from the police and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, which expressed concern about a plan to put indexes to births, deaths and marriages registers on the internet for public search.
When the proposed legislation emerged in February, the clampdown on access was in stark contrast to amendments initially proposed in 2003, when Cabinet papers show it was considered that "the method of providing for public and agency access generally operates well" and provides for freedom of information.
According to Barker, the shift is a sign of the times. There is growing concern about the effect the internet could have on cases of identity fraud, and putting our registers online would increase the ability to scour through them.
"In the very early days, a lot of the register information was held in the local church, or on paper in the registry office," Barker said. "When you turned up, the person behind the desk probably knew who you were, who your parents were - the society was small and intimate. But it's no longer that small and intimate."
Globally, open access to births, deaths and marriages registers is not always available. Many states in Australia, the United States and Canada have tighter access provisions than New Zealand.
But in the part of the world to which most of New Zealand's family researchers eventually turn, Britain, there is open access, and indexes can even be searched on the internet.
New Zealand Society of Genealogists executive officer Peter Nash is worried about the effect the Government's proposals will have on the work that he and others in his field do.
As an example, around Anzac Day commemorations there has grown to be a strong interest in finding out more about the fallen soldiers whose names are etched on monuments.
A project is under way in conjunction with RSAs to put together a small biography and get pictures and information of every name that is on a memorial. "It's really starting to be an important project," Nash said. But it would be scuttled if the Government's bill passed into law in its current form, he said. The Society of Genealogists has put together a submission on the bill and Nash has been lobbying MPs. He is concerned that the Israeli spy scandal is being used as a "red herring" on which the Government is trying to sell its bill.
"If I oppose the access then I must be endorsing the passport fraud," he said. "But there is nothing in this which will stop it [identity fraud]."
Indeed, Cabinet papers show that officials agreed that the proposed changes to access rules would not, in itself prevent identity fraud.
Personal information is available from many other sources, including electoral rolls and the internet, and it can also be snatched if a person doesn't dispose of their bank statements or other mail safely.
But a view is expressed in the Cabinet papers that the access clampdown will at least make life more difficult for fraudsters. According to Nash, it will also make life more difficult for people researching their family trees.
A person looking into past generations might not immediately find the relative they are looking for, but instead somebody with the same name who isn't related, he said.
Nash said such difficulties mean it is important for researchers to be able to look at the records of a wider group of people than that proposed by the Government.
He is also concerned the time limit placed on a person's records being made available - 100 years - could cover several generations if people had children when they were relatively young.
"We're explaining to MPs how we use the registers, because I don't think they understand," Nash said. "The Labour Party is wanting to be all open about our heritage, yet they're inadvertently closing it off."
Biographers who write books about families and high-profile people without authorisation are among others opposing the access changes. Organisations representing the country's media are also lodging submissions against the proposed legislation.
The independent chairman of the Press Council, Barry Paterson, said it is valid to try to prevent identity theft and fraud. But the "blanket restriction" being proposed eroded long-established principles of freedom of access to what are essentially public records, he said. "We just think that it might be using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut," Paterson said.
The Press Council argues that while the motivation for the bill is legitimate, it needs to be balanced against the public interest and the public right to information.
"We just wonder [whether] this particular restriction might stop legitimate press investigation of matters which are of public interest," Paterson said.
Lobbying by the bill's opponents has led to a grouping of Parliament's smaller parties believing the Government needs to back down.
The Greens and United Future have told Barker that their future support for the bill will be contingent on amendments that ensure the continuation of open access to the births, deaths and marriages registers.
The Maori Party also has concerns about the impact the proposals might have on research, and National opposed the bill at its first reading on the grounds that there was a lack of public consultation and the work of genealogists would be affected.
The four parties hold enough votes to scuttle the bill. The Beehive is now talking compromise, although Prime Minister Helen Clark didn't seem too concerned about the legislation when asked about the prospect of it being voted down.
"I'd hardly regard it as a major piece of legislation," she said at her post-Cabinet press conference two weeks ago. "It's on the table, got a majority for introduction, it may come back from a select committee changed, who knows. It's not going to be earth-shattering either way."
Barker is prepared to talk about the fine print, but still wants people to think about what the bill is for. He points to reports estimating the cost of identity theft in New Zealand at about $400 million a year, and in Parliament drew attention to the case of a man who, in 2005, pleaded guilty to charges relating to assuming the identity of a dead baby.
The man, William Roach, obtained a birth certificate for the baby and used it and other forged documents to successfully apply for a New Zealand passport. He was also receiving welfare payments in the name of the baby.
"This Parliament should be concerned about both issues," Barker said.
He said there was no intention to put a barrier in front of anybody researching their family history, and the bill allowed people to look up the details of their immediate family members. If they want to research somebody else, they should ask that person, he said.
And pointing out that once records reach 100 years old they will be openly available, Barker said he was confident New Zealanders would think it was remarkable that anyone could go into an office and obtain personal information about anyone.
"[When] looking at protecting the living and protecting the information of New Zealand citizens from identity theft, the state does have to take some precautions - at the moment there are no precautions."
What happens now:
* Any member of the public can obtain the registered information of virtually anyone else.
If the bill passed:
A person would be able to access
* Only his or her own birth records
* Or those of an immediate family member
* Or someone born more than 100 years ago.
For anyone else's details, authorisation would be needed from the person concerned.
