I wrote a quick reply to
@Useful_Mistake earlier because I thought I understood the underlying processes involved, but after a few minutes, I noticed that it might be more nuanced than I thought and deleted the post. He then quoted my deleted post, but he brings up a good point. It's not very clear what threshold of proof of death the SSA requires. The portion of the SSA page he was originally referring to is:
SSA page on FOIA requests said:
Extreme Age Policy – Number Holder
We will not disclose information about any person in our records unless: 1) the number holder has provided written consent or we have acceptable proof of his or her death; or 2) the number holder is at least 100 years old and we have acceptable proof of his or her death; or 3) the number holder is more than 120 years old.
The first thing I don't understand is how sections (1) and (2) are fundamentally different unless the burden of "acceptable proof" of death is different for people under 100 years old vs those over 100. But they don't elaborate.
The closest thing I can find that defines "acceptable proof of...death" is the POMS (internal SSA instruction documents) document
here (section B, subsection 2, since we don't know if Byuu's hypothetical remains were interred in Japan or the US). That instructs the SSA employee to first ask the FOIA filer for the consular death report, but by the wording on the State Department's page on
requesting consular death reports, that report is only explicitly available to "next of kin and legal representation for estate purposes". However, there are other forms of proof of death that the SSA may have already received that just aren't explicitly listed among these documents.
At this point, I don't think I can try to figure it out myself any further. POMS is full of jargon and abbreviations that aren't easy to understand for non-SSA employees. They even have a
home page that warns plebs like us that the documents are difficult to interpret for people unfamiliar with the internal systems.
late edit: On a closer look, POMS documents appear to focus specifically on the processing of Social Security benefit claims, so it makes some sense that the burden of proof for a claim of death in order to get benefits is higher than it would be for a general death information request. This also would explain why they'd ask applicants to supply a consular death report for a family member who died overseas in order to get benefits; those family members would likely be eligible to request it from the State Dept. as the deceased's next of kin.
There is no similar "Extreme Age Policy" explicitly listed on the Form SSA-711, so I don't know if it's handled differently than a similar FOIA request by the SSA or not. There's a slightly older (now expired) version of the SSA-711
here on another government page that has a similar policy, but the burden of proof is much lower, including obituaries and newspaper articles documenting a death as acceptable proof.
Basically, I'm pretty sure I'm out of my depth at this point. I think we'd either need someone who works for (or is more familiar with) the SSA to clarify things or for someone to just file a FOIA/Form SSA-711 and see how the SSA responds. If they ask for further proof, ask them specifically which sorts of proof would be acceptable.
Problem is that even if we asked SSN for info, their response would be meaningless. If they say they have no confirmed death, it could be either that:
1. They were not informed
or
2. He's not dead.
And we would have no way to know which one it is.
Out of 3 possible responses (including 'he's dead' response), 67% of their possible responses will not give us any more valuable information than we already have.
Right, the SSA is not informed of every death, but they are informed of the vast majority of them. I find it hard to believe that a relatively high-profile death of a US citizen in Tokyo would not make it back to them one way or another.
