Senate 'date of birth' bill would have hampered investigative reporting

Keeping the dates of birth of public employees from being made public sounds like an important proposal to protect their privacy. However, journalists point out that dates of birth are critical to investigative reporting in confirming the identification of public employees and that identity thieves use other means for identity theft.

The dates of birth are used to make sure the right person is identified in news stories and are rarely published, opponents of the bill argued.

State Sen. Jane Nelson of Flower Mound introduced the bill in the Legislature that would have exempted dates of birth from public disclosure. Ultimately, only a portion of this bill is expected to become law. Part of the legislation, which would prevent release of information pertaining to employees of a hospital district, was added to SB 1182 as an amendment. SB 331 originally would have applied to all government employees.

“The goal of this legislation is to protect sensitive information that could put our public employees in harm’s way. Dates of birth should be protected from identity thieves, who would love to have this information to unlock our personal finances,” Nelson said.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, most identity theft results from stolen credit cards, government ID or bank statements, not through public records requests, Jennifer LaFleur wrote in her Citizen Watchdog column in The Dallas Morning News.

Dates of birth are available from many other public records, including voter registration records and driving records.

In covering the problems of the Texas Youth Commission, Morning News reporters found 266 employees with criminal records. The paper checked TYC employee backgrounds by comparing their dates of birth and names to criminal conviction records.

The Dallas Morning News reporters in 2006 used similar techniques to show that hundreds of Dallas Independent School District employees had criminal records. In 2003, the paper again used dates of birth to identify Texas schoolteachers who were registered sex offenders.

In 2004, Morning News reporters found that scores of drug and sex offenders were licensed nurses in Texas, many of them unknown to a state licensing board that conducts very few criminal background checks.

“Without dates of birth, we won’t be able to report about government agencies that are hiring people with criminal backgrounds,” LaFleur wrote. “And we won’t know if agencies are hiring people who are of the legal age to do their jobs.”