Forensic genealogy is an interesting activity. You trace your ancestors to the ship they arrived on, when they dies, how many children they had and so on until you have completed a large family tree stretching back generations. That is up until part way through the 1900's, after that you run into the privacy laws.
While there may have been some good reasons for the concept the implementation protects criminals at all levels from the pedophile to the senior Minister. The Freedom of Information Act breaks down and unevenly applies exception to the Privacy Acts in a subject manner.
Privacy laws stop people from getting their lost property back e.g. the case of a lost cell phone that could not be given back to the owner because of privacy laws. In some cases privacy is a good thing, especially in the cases of acts against children. The blanket application of such a philosophy protect the wrong groups and blocks reasonable activities for the majority.
It is easy to destroy things when activities are hidden behind walls of secrecy.
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