Quatloos!

Does anyone know what a SovCit means when she says she is having a birth certificate authenticated? What is this intended to accomplish? And what does it actually do, if anything? Main concern is that mom wants to do this 'process' with the kids birth certificates and I have no idea what's going on and if I should be concerned.

When she deals with some third party (private school for example) she tells me they know the birth certificates are being authenticated and are happy to set up the proper 'corporate relationship' but I'm clueless here. My guess is that any institution will happily say 'yeah yeah yeah, whatever you say lady' and then take your money for whatever service. They don't want to get into it or lose business, but again it's taken as evidence that this is the 'real way' to do things and that the administrators are in on the secret.

Any thoughts?

It probably needs proof that it's human.

It's yet another meaningless scam where they suggest you go through the process of authenticating a birth certificate as if it turns you into the owner of yourself as opposed to being a slave to the evil gubmint who apparently uses un-authenticated birth certificates to do all kinds of nefarious things to you. Utterly meaningless in the real world but surprise, surprise - you can buy the package from the promoters and they'll send you the forms and show you how to do it!!!! After which, nothing happens.

Unless it's as trivial as requiring the aised seal of the issuing organization on the paper.

I had to go through that when I got my first passport. My birth certificate was so old that the raised seal was worn down to nothing.

There are some times you need to have a birth certificate "authenticated." As Andy pointed out, if you are applying for a passport for the first time, or entering a child in school, they will want a BC with a raised seal, not just a photocopy. But all that "authentication" does is provide proof that the BC is an accurate copy of an official record. Anyone claiming it has some other magic powers is either a scammer or deluded.

The most that the State Health Dept will do is issue a copy of the Birth Certificate with the impression seal to verify that the copy is made from the original Dept certificate.

The Health Dept is usually restricted to issuing birth certificates only to members of the family involved and nobody else, so schools, detectives, and others are ordinarily locked out of the process of getting someone's birth certificate. It does appear that certain very important govt agencies - the FBI and CIA, for example - can get birth certificate copies but I am unfamiliar with the details.

People getting a passport are required to obtain and present their birth certificates to the passport adjudicator, who is (I speak from experience) supposed to check the impression seal to make sure it is the health dept seal and not some old notary seal or something. Until 1973 it was possible to get a passport with a baptismal certificate or a hospital-issued birth document, some of which were very decorative, but by then many hundreds of cases had piled up of hospital and church blanks being stolen by staff and visitors, and at least one deconsecrated church having been sold to a kinky cult who tried to defray their expenses by selling the old baptismal certificates they found in the basement with any name or date desired to anyone with $200. Even health dept certificates were not bulletproof - at one point the US Virgin Islands Health Dept was, on a weekend, very leisurely burglerized and the entire office safe, with the birth certificate blanks and the seal machine inside, carted off by persons unknown.

Birth Certificates themselves are NOT financial documents (although, in a desperate effort to discourage forgeries, some states had their certificate blanks prepared by the same banknote printers who make anti-counterfeiting travelers checks and the like), do not have any legitimate monetary value, and their only purpose is to attest to the birth of such-and-such a person in a specific place on a specific date to parents named thus-and-so. Some states used to include some Very Personal items on their birth certificate forms, such as when/whether the parents were married, the parents' occupations and their own birthdates, whether the mother had an STD, stuff like that which is nobody's business and a good reason that strangers don't get to roam through the birth records.

An additional note. An anti-terrorism law enacted under Jr. Bush in 2004 explicitly required all Health Depts to use "security paper" for producing their birth certificates. The Committee reports make clear that this is intended to mean that the birth certificates should be printed or copied upon paper with some background that frustrates any sort of counterfeiting or alteration, much like banknote paper.

The Hawaii Health Dept thereupon adopted the security paper known as "Green Basket Weave" and when Senator Barack Obama obtained a replacement copy of his birth certificate around 2007, prior to his Presidiential campaign, it was, accordingly, printed upon that Green Basket Weave security paper .... which is why the internet or magazine image of it gave everyone's Photoshop program fits; the security paper was doing its job, frustrating counterfeiting and the like. Ditto when the Health Dept bent the rules in 2011 and made a copy, onto the same paper, of the original physician's birth report for the President. Every amateur and self-proclaimed detective (and quite a few professional ones) bleated about various anomalous "readings" of the President's two birth documents - it was because the security paper, required by a federal law enacted under Bush, was actually effective at what it was supposed to do.

As a side-note: Here in the UK, "Birth Certificate Authentication" does make some kind of sense. If someone showed me a UK birth certificate, I (or anyone) could check online for free that the details tallied with the official register. I could even order another copy of the birth certificate for £9.25.

Of course, this would merely validate the certificate as genuine, not that the person presenting the certificate was the person named on it.

littleFred wrote:As a side-note: Here in the UK, "Birth Certificate Authentication" does make some kind of sense. If someone showed me a UK birth certificate, I (or anyone) could check online for free that the details tallied with the official register. I could even order another copy of the birth certificate for £9.25.

Of course, this would merely validate the certificate as genuine, not that the person presenting the certificate was the person named on it.

Indeed. Over here at least, consider that the purpose of the certificate is to establish that a live birth occurred at a certain location at a specified date and the parent(s) gave that person a name. It's not identification and it has nothing to do with the federal government or taxation.

I sat through a Winston Shrout seminar in which this was one of the most important steps in getting ownership over your own birth certificate, which somehow makes you immune from some or all laws. The explanations were highly incoherent. As I recall, he was actually firm that you did NOT want the BC notarized, you needed it authenticated, and you are supposed to do it (seriously) by sending it to the US Secretary of State with a cover letter saying it's for use in Taiwan. (Has to be Taiwan or some other "non Hague country," IIRC.) Then they put a seal on it stating that it's authentic or approved for all purposes or whatever, and then....

I have no idea what was supposed to come next. Not sure Shrout did, either.

More recently I heard similar noises coming from the Agenda 31 radio show/podcast. Not talking about this specific tactic, just the need to own your own BC.