[HN Gopher] A woman's battle to prove she isn't dead ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-07-03 23:00 UTC)