Due to some flaw in my personality I love thinking about where my data goes after I fill out a form. Friends who work for giant banks describe projects that take years—endless regulatory documents, huge meetings, all to move a few on-screen pixels around. It can take 18 months to change a couple of text boxes. Why? What bureaucracy forces that slow pace? I like to imagine the flow of paperwork through the world, even if there’s no paper to consider.

This happens to me every few months, the desire to just grab and hold on to and explore a large database. I’ll download the text on Wikipedia, for example, and mess around with it. I might erase it to save space later. I’ll go fetch a few thousand public domain books and make a list of word frequencies, or get a list of millions of songs. I don’t have a motive; some idea just tugs at my shirttails, and, well, why not? It’s only a few hours of a lifetime, and perhaps I’ll discover something new. Databases are interesting to read and explore. They’re one of the things that makes the web the web.

Which explains how I found myself in possession of the names of more than 85 million dead Americans—the Social Security Death Master File. I’d asked on Twitter for interesting databases, and someone told me: Check this one out! It’s full of corpses! But after I had a copy, I realized that it’s a strange thing to be in possession of a massive list of dead people. It turns out that not just anyone is supposed to download the government’s book of death; you must undergo a certification by the National Technical Information Service, to demonstrate a legitimate reason to use the data, plus pay $1,825 for an entry-level subscription to access it. Restrictions on use and security were added to the federal budget for 2014. Its customers are banks and other organizations that want to track data about dead people to protect their interests and avoid fraud. The data also shows up on genealogy web sites while other companies resell access as a service.

Social Security numbers were first issued in 1936, to track people through the Social Security system—payment of benefits, and so forth. Getting a Social Security card became a ritual of American life. I remember going to some blank office, aged eleven, and signing with pomp, because how often do eleven-year-olds get to sign anything official?