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Famous people who donate their stuff to archives often disallow access— even to the archivists themselves— for multiple-decades. Dead folks’ possession could ha
by chefandy 4y ago
Famous people who donate their stuff to archives often disallow access— even to the archivists themselves— for multiple-decades. Dead folks’ possession could have serious privacy implications. PII aside, people might have letters discussing quietly miscarried children, other people’s non-public embarrassing financial mistakes, or any number of other things that would be unethical to expose any other people while it could be consequential. It’s not like everybody they interacted with is dead, too.
- techdragon 4y agoThe census laws in many countries protect access to the actual raw data until at least a few years and usually a few decades after the people in question are dead and sometimes there’s even blanket rules on accessing anything more recent than 75 to a hundred years ago. So even the governments with extensive historical records tend to follow similar rules to the ones you mention about archives access.