Morris, who is in her th year, will get to experience the novelty of seeing her own name and details about her life in the records being released by the U. National Archives online after 72 years of confidentiality expires. Morris is one of more than 21 million people alive in the U. It's a distinction she shares with such living celebrities as Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman. Morris, who has been working on her family history since and has written six books on its branches, said census records were essential for her genealogical work because oftentimes people don't want to give their personal information.
But census records, which include names, addresses and -- in the case of the census, income and employment information -- are rich with long-veiled personal details. Morris, who turns in August and was contacted through the National Centenarian Awareness Project, said she was working as a keypunch operator in Fairfield, Ill.
While a name index will not be immediately available to search, tens of thousands of researchers across the country are expected to go on a monumental genealogical hunt this week through the digitized records for details on million people. Access to the records will be free and open to anyone on the Internet.
Every decade since , the National Archives has made available records from past censuses. Some privacy advocates have opposed releasing such large amounts of personal information about living people. The American Civil Liberties Union, for instance, has for over 30 years opposed any unrestricted release of census records.
Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU, said harm could come from combining the rich census data with other information. But when brought together, they become very intrusive. Census Bureau raised privacy concerns about the disclosure of the census by the nation's record-keeper.
