WP: FEMA Restricts Evacuee Data, Citing Privacy(Families & Police Protest)

[Pirate Smile]

FEMA Restricts Evacuee Data, Citing Privacy
Families and Police Protest

By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 12, 2005; Page A01

SAN ANTONIO, Oct. 11 -- The Federal Emergency Management Agency is restricting the release of information on Hurricane Katrina evacuees, complicating efforts by families to find loved ones and by law enforcement officials searching for parolees and convicted sex offenders.

Citing privacy concerns, FEMA has rejected a request by Texas officials for access to its database of the more than 100,000 evacuees who have registered for state aid, according to the governor's office. FEMA has also declined requests from five states to cross-check a database of convicted sex offenders and parolees against a list of evacuees requesting federal assistance, law enforcement officials said.


FEMA officials initially would not disclose to his family the whereabouts of evacuee Edwin Coleman, 80. (By John Pomfret -- The Washington Post)

FEMA officials have started prohibiting workers at a large shelter here from sharing information about evacuees even with family members unless the evacuees had signed release forms. In many cases, relief workers said, such forms were lost or never presented in the chaos of the exodus. FEMA authorities made similar restrictions last week when they took over management of shelters in Beaumont, Tex.

"If we find someone, we've been instructed to tell family members, 'He or she is alive and well in San Antonio,' and that's it," said Rene Gauna, a San Antonio city employee working at a FEMA-managed shelter at the old Kelly Air Force Base. "We're no longer allowed to release new addresses or telephone numbers or tell people where their loved ones have moved."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/11/AR2005101101747.html

[global1]

1. What Kind of BS Is That? What The Hell Is Going On?.... n/t

[fearnobush]

2. Wow, sounds like a massive Govt cover up. How many are really Dead FEMA?

Last count on Friday was 1003 in LA alone with thousands still missing. What is the real motive in hiding a death count? Money Politics?

[JanusAscending]

3. This is some serious SHIT!!

I am honored to nominate and KICK! Come on guys, enough is enough. I think we ought to sic Fitzgerald on FEMA!!:grr: :kick:

[fshrink]

4. Fact is

we have about as much information, on the whole, as Russians had 50 years ago.

[kurtyboy]

5. Gotta defend FEMA on this one.

The Privacy Act of 1974 protects all of that sort of personal information unless a release is obvious (usually a signed form).

This is a good law, and FEMA is doing well to obey it. Many of the police organizations in the neighboring states will use negative information (a twenty year old pot-posession charge, for example) to keep "undesirable" folks (colored...) out of shelters in their communities, or out of the community altogether. Trust me, I've seen this whole show before.

[Kailassa]

6. I'd trust somebody who defends FEMA just like I would trust FEMA itself.

It's kinda a pity they never distributed release forms in the first place, so these people couldn't sign them, don't you think? Or was that a commendable way of not wasting paper?

"trust me" ... Funny the pictures those words bring to mind.

[ngGale]

7. FEMA covering up the death total...

what else could it possibly be? It's not as though FEMA has been concerned about NOLA, at any point.:grr:

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

8. Agreed, I think that's what this is probably all about. Because it's the

number of MISSING where most of the dead are, and they don't want people to start adding up those numbers.