[HN Gopher] A woman's battle to prove she isn't dead
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A woman's battle to prove she isn't dead
Author : edward
Score : 57 points
Date : 2021-07-03 13:30 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| hanche wrote:
| This is apparently a common problem in India. There is even an
| "Association of dead people".
|
| https://www.improbable.com/2020/12/09/update-on-film-about-f...
|
| Update: That is actually mentioned in the article. I had only
| skimmed it, and missed that somehow. Oops.
| FpUser wrote:
| I think she should be right to apply to European Human Rights (or
| whatever it is called) court. May be this will shame those
| pathetic scumbags enough.
| skissane wrote:
| The European Court of Human Rights can take years to reach a
| decision. It has a case backlog of over 60,000 cases. It has
| only 47 judges. That's over 1000 pending cases per a judge.
| xaedes wrote:
| This reminds me of "The Machine Fired Me - No human could do a
| thing about it!" [1], where a guy got fired by some bug in the
| system and no one could stop or reverse it. It was posted on HN
| [2] three years agos.
|
| [1] https://idiallo.com/blog/when-a-machine-fired-me
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17350645
| FpUser wrote:
| Stories like this make my blood boil. How fucked up the system
| must be to allow such abuse. But of course they're human loving
| democracy. Bureaucrats who could fix it in a minute but instead
| prefer the person being tortured would definitely benefit
| spending some time in Gulag.
|
| And the cherry on top. I di not know that free person in France
| can not legally move without Ausweis. Nice.
| Aerroon wrote:
| It makes my blood boil too. I think this is one of those cases
| in life where you have to make as much noise as possible. When
| people feel uncomfortable enough they'll be more likely to
| resolve your situation so that you stop shouting at them.
| javajosh wrote:
| Noise is good, but it means you have to have a great filter,
| because trolls exist and will enjoy torturing this woman and
| her supporters with malicious statements. It's not a matter
| of if, but when, this happens.
|
| In fact, there's a type of trolling that's become endemic in
| the US which allows that you are responsible for your
| situation, and if your situation is good you must deserve it
| (prosperity gospel), and if it's bad, you must deserve it too
| (prosperity gospel's evil twin).
|
| But the noise will attract the trolls as well as supporters,
| and she's got to be prepared for it. And it sounds like she's
| not psychologically well (as one would expect) so its a
| serious downside to making noise.
| ElViajero wrote:
| > Bureaucrats who could fix it in a minute
|
| That is not how this works. Bureaucrats needs to legally be
| instructed to change the register, "I saw something yesterday
| on TV and I am going to change official records" would be the
| worse bureaucracy ever. A bureaucrat that did such a change
| would end out of a job and maybe in prison for a good reason.
|
| > How fucked up the system must be to allow such abuse.
|
| The "system" works for millions of people. One weird case and
| you want to throw away the complete system. Google or Facebook
| close accounts randomly, meanwhile the state is able to keep
| proper records for a century with minimum mistakes. Yes, it is
| bad for this woman. Yes, they need to fix her case. No, it is
| not a reason to throw away a system that works.
|
| > France
|
| From the article, this also happened in Ohio. "In 2013, an Ohio
| judge ruled that Donald E Miller Jr would have to stay legally
| deceased, even though Miller was sitting in the courtroom to
| hear his fate, perfectly healthy. He had been declared dead in
| 1994 after having disappeared in 1986, owing thousands of
| dollars in unpaid child support. His ex-wife had requested
| Miller be declared dead so she would eligible for social
| security benefits. When Miller returned - he had been working
| out of state - he was told that Ohio cannot reverse death
| certificates after more than three years."
|
| > I did not know that free person in France can not legally
| move without Ausweis.
|
| Not in France nor in the USA. Try to move around the USA
| without a birth certificate and you are going to find how many
| problems you have to access properties and a job. Even in the
| Roman Empire you needed a birth certificate to prove ownership
| of land.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Blah blah blah. One weird case and you want to throw away
| the complete system.
|
| Who said anything about "throwing away a system". Just fix
| the fucking particular case. I am pretty sure if shit like
| this happened to their president it would've been handled in
| a minute. Taking away her rights was illegal in a first place
| anyways.
|
| >"Not in France nor in the USA. Try to move around the USA
| without a birth certificate"
|
| Under "move" I meant just simply walking on a street without
| ID. Not things like buying a house. If one can be charged for
| simply walking on a street without ID the country is fucked.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Assuming dead people can't be charged for crimes, I wonder if she
| can just start threatening to shoot politicians/judges in the
| head and tell them "Go ahead and file a police complaint, at
| least you'll resurrect me if you want to charge me."...
| TheFreim wrote:
| They could just charge her as Jane Doe
| krapp wrote:
| No. Being "declared dead" doesn't mean the state is required to
| pretend you're _actually_ dead, rather it means you 're "dead"
| as a _legal_ entity as far as the bureaucracy is concerned -
| your assets will be distributed as necessary, you can 't have a
| drivers' license, passport, can't vote, etc. If you commit a
| crime while declared dead, obviously you'll just be arrested
| and tried like anyone else.
| LanceH wrote:
| So long as you get a life sentence, it's all good.
| nkssy wrote:
| Who will be charged? A legally dead person. Nice. That will
| be fun to write up. But they will. Because they're idiots.
| krapp wrote:
| They would be idiots not to. Otherwise, getting some
| crooked doctor or administrator to declare you dead would
| mean you could never be charged with a crime.
| javajosh wrote:
| Of course they will. When legal details becomes an obstacle
| for what the state wants, the details are brushed aside as
| unimportant with an appeal to "common sense". When those
| same details are an obstacle to what an individual wants,
| we're sorry, it's not our fault, that's just what the law
| requires and we _must_ follow the law, even if we don 't
| want to. And if you have a complaint, there's a process for
| that. It may take a great deal of effort on your part, and
| years of waiting, but again, that's just the process and
| there's nothing to be done.
| nkssy wrote:
| Of course they will because they have a crime and there's
| someone in front of them to pin it on. Thats the hot
| potato approach that most legal systems rely on. The
| follow up is to determine whether the person they have is
| the right one. Even if they have to drag it out for
| years. Which in some cases they do.
| ezoe wrote:
| Keeping it legally dead is absurd. What if she commit a crime?
|
| "Your honor. She has alibi. She was dead when it happened."
| mikem170 wrote:
| This is a big problem with large bureaucracies. They can be
| inhumane. It's not good that we are forced more and more as
| individuals to be subservient to them.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| Reminds me of the plot of the 1985 film "Brazil":
|
| >In a dystopian, polluted, over-consumerist, hyper-bureaucratic
| totalitarian future somewhere in the 20th century, Sam Lowry is a
| low-level government employee who frequently dreams of himself as
| a winged warrior saving a damsel in distress. One day, shortly
| before Christmas, a fly becomes jammed in a teleprinter,
| misprinting a copy of an arrest warrant it was receiving
| resulting in the arrest and accidental death during interrogation
| of cobbler Archibald Buttle instead of renegade heating engineer
| and suspected terrorist Archibald Tuttle.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film)#Plot
| zzzpaz wrote:
| Reminds me of The Late Mattia Pascal romance
| nkssy wrote:
| Surely this is a human rights violation? And there is fraud
| involved. Identify theft. Theft of assets. Likely corruption as
| well. False imprisonment. Harassment. The list goes on.
|
| So does the administrative incompetance of both the government
| and legal systems.
|
| The threat about driving is hilarious. So she drives, gets caught
| driving or speeding. Who are they then going to charge? Whatever
| answer you come up with, the response will be: But she's dead.
| Now what? They'll have to charge her. Won't that be hilarious:
| charging a dead person. For driving. Take that to court.
|
| The seizure of assets thing. Linking the car as her asset has to
| be incompetant policing. The deceased estate has to close off
| sometime. So add that to the list as well.
|
| In reality they know she's alive and they just don't want to fix
| it because they simply don't want to. The case where her identity
| was deemed dead just has to be overturned - the fact they won't
| implies they don't want to. Just because. More corruption.
|
| What a mess.
| drdeadringer wrote:
| > The threat about driving is hilarious. So she drives, gets
| caught driving or speeding. Who are they then going to charge?
| Whatever answer you come up with, the response will be: But
| she's dead. Now what? They'll have to charge her. Won't that be
| hilarious: charging a dead person. For driving. Take that to
| court.
|
| Say this happens in America.
|
| The defendant files for habeas corpus.
|
| "Here I am, Your Honor, filing for my own body to be produced
| for trial. Shall I leave and walk back in or will it suffice
| for your bailiff to say that I am in fact standing in front of
| you making this motion? Thank you."
| nkssy wrote:
| Yet this likely wouldn't help. This is how messed up the
| whole thing can get.
|
| From the article: In 2013, an Ohio judge ruled that Donald E
| Miller Jr would have to stay legally deceased, even though
| Miller was sitting in the courtroom to hear his fate,
| perfectly healthy. He had been declared dead in 1994.
| norvvryo wrote:
| This reminds me of the "I Will Kill You & Birth You" DEFCON
| presentation by Chris Rock.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FdHq3WfJgs
| joombaga wrote:
| "she can only have a Covid vaccination if she joins the waiting
| list as a homeless person."
|
| ...
|
| "she has finally been able to get her first Covid vaccination,
| although she had to pay EUR150 for it"
|
| Do the homeless have to pay for covid vaccination in France?
| NoPie wrote:
| It seems strange. The most expensive vaccine is Pfizer and it
| costs about 30 euros. A doctor administering vaccine could
| charge maybe another EUR30. Of course, you could find a private
| clinic or something which charges EUR150 but then why mention
| waiting list for homeless?
|
| I believe that people can get mistakenly declared dead and
| depending on how corrupted the legal system is, it may be
| almost impossible to reverse the decision. I wouldn't expect
| this in France however. Maybe, a year or two to resolve if the
| bureaucracy is moving slowly. There is something that is
| missing in this article. I can buy that the court had a
| gullible judge or something but what about other institutions
| that award social security or medical care? Wouldn't they need
| a death certificate? And if they had made a mistake wouldn't
| they try to correct it?
|
| In Latvia there is central register of all persons. Some people
| immigrate to other countries and then die there and the
| register never gets updated, therefore according to this
| register we have a lot of people over 100 years old. You could
| go to the court to make a case that a certain person has
| disappeared for really long time, so he must be dead by now. I
| have never heard about such cases being reversed but
| theoretically someone still could return from abroad alive. I
| don't think that the state would refuse to correct their
| mistake unless it was a question of national security or a lot
| of money was involved.
| lstamour wrote:
| No, she likely found another option to acquire the vaccine.
| pcrh wrote:
| This seems to be a clear case of fraud by whoever had her
| declared dead. As well as earlier incompetence by whoever handled
| the transfer of Mme H's employment records.
|
| Further, Article 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
| states: "Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a
| person before the law."
|
| She needs a better lawyer....
| sascha_sl wrote:
| If your existence is an edge case no lawyer can help you. As
| the article said, even the justice minister of France is aware
| of the issue, yet not willing to act on it.
|
| A much less severe version of this is changing your first name
| (or, indeed, gender marker). Systems are only now gaining the
| ability to even change some of these records, but often it is
| up to the people with limited access to these systems to "work
| around" them. Whenever possible I didn't even ask to change my
| name, just close one account and make another. Including with a
| bank that actually suggested I do this.
| pacman2 wrote:
| This article sounds like bullshit and I am sure I could
| handle this without a lawyer in "administrative court". I
| filed 4 law suits in administrative courts in my country and
| won them all. I used a lawyer only once in another EU country
| for my girl friend since I did not speak the local language.
| In hind sight I may have done it myself since my language
| should have been recognized as a minority language in court
| in this country. But the lawyer was only 300 Euro.
|
| This is still the west and courts still work. Don't be
| intimidated.
| pcrh wrote:
| Why would she not be able to sue for recognition as a living
| person?
| sascha_sl wrote:
| She had trouble even getting a lawyer to take her as a
| client. People that don't exist can probably not file
| lawsuits either.
| pcrh wrote:
| >People that don't exist can probably not file lawsuits
| either.
|
| Haha, very Kafka!
|
| Seriously, though, I find it hard to imagine that this is
| an _impossible_ case.
| Cyykratahk wrote:
| I don't understand why the author leaves many words and phrases
| untranslated. They have translated everything else, but why leave
| "carte d'identite" or "grande ecole"? Why say "mairie (town
| hall)" instead of just saying town hall?
|
| These are not loan words that exist in English, and the
| untranslated words themselves did not seem essential to the
| story.
|
| I've seen a similar issue with Anime fansubs where the translator
| deems certain words to be untranslatable, and then adds an entire
| extra sentence of definition on screen upon the first usage.
| ericd wrote:
| Maybe because "grande ecole" literally means "big school", but
| it's essentially a proper noun in French, similar to their
| version of "Ivy League"?
|
| Not sure why for the others you mention, except that they're
| very specific concepts in France as well, which don't really
| have very good analogues in the US.
|
| Or maybe they just like the sound of the French word and want
| to sound more sophisticated.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Perhaps these are specific names? I could call the US
| 'Congress' as 'Parliament', but 'Congress' is probably the
| better choice.
|
| > _I 've seen a similar issue with Anime fansubs where the
| translator deems certain words to be untranslatable,_
|
| Yes, as it should be. This is why official translations suck
| and fansubs are superior works.
| Zababa wrote:
| > Perhaps these are specific names?
|
| They are. "grande ecole" can be translated to "big school",
| but in French it means a prestigious school. "carte
| d'identite" is also a specific document, since you can also
| prove your identity with your passport or your driver's
| license. For the "mairie" part, I don't know about the
| specifics of town halls in the USA so I can't compare. It's
| probably that they work differently so using the same word
| would imply the same thing.
|
| > This is why official translations suck and fansubs are
| superior works.
|
| Don't get me started on half-assed attempts at localization,
| especially when made by people that can't even understand the
| original language.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| > I don't understand why the author leaves many words and
| phrases untranslated
|
| Because they are effectively proper nouns. You cannot translate
| them, you can at most explain them. For example, grande ecole
| has its own page on English Wikipedia and which is called
| grande ecole, not translated to big school or something else.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_%C3%A9cole
| mcfedr wrote:
| Well on English a town hall is just a big space used for events
| and things, whereas a marie is is clearly more like the local
| government offices
| MeteorMarc wrote:
| Reminds me of a story by H. Mulisch in which someone dies lying
| across the border between jurisdictions. The one jurisdiction
| serves bodies when the head is in, the other when the larger part
| of the body is in. The body stayed where it was...
| smnrchrds wrote:
| That's how the bilingual Canadian film _Bon Cop, Bad Cop_
| starts. A body is discovered on Quebec-Ontario border. To solve
| the murder case, an anglophone Ontario cop and a francophone
| Quebec cop have to team up.
| LinAGKar wrote:
| And it's also the start of the Swedish-Danish TV series The
| Bridge. A body is found on the Oresund Bridge between Denmark
| and Sweden, and a Swedish and Danish cop has to cooperate
| (with the Swedish one being a woman with Asperger's). Of
| course in that case, Swedish and Danish are mutually
| intelligible.
| krakov wrote:
| And yet it is possible to fix given an agreed-upon validator on
| being alive /being trustable (the french goverment), assuming she
| still lives by then.
|
| In our decentralized future[1] this kind of error will be
| impossible to rectify, as long as someone believes you are dead
| or just untrustable.
|
| 1. Companies like https://www.identiq.com/ (they are far from
| only ones)
| racnid wrote:
| Schemes like that only work if you participate. Even in America
| we have people that refuse to participate in the birth
| certificate and social security scheme for better or for
| (mostly) worse.
| vfclists wrote:
| The legal system is an inherently corrupt system which deals with
| human beings as what is called a "legal fiction".
|
| Live humans are seen by the legal system as entities which make
| the "legal fiction" profitable to interact with.
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