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Your (Australian) Criminal Record Online
An unknown assailant submitted the following: "A new web site calling itself CrimeNet is causing a bit of a controversy in Australia. For as little as $6, you can look up anyone's criminal record and perhaps even become your very own vigilante. The Age had an interesting story on the topic. Now where did I put those pitchforks and flaming torches?" And what if you happen to share the name of a heinous criminal? This sort of site seems inevitable, but ripe for abuse.
I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone mention this yet, but North Carolina has had something like this for at least a few months. Says 123nc.com's front page: "Why worry about someone's past when you can know the truth right now."
And they're advertising. I've seen/heard plenty of spots for these guys on radio and TV -- feel-good, soft-spoken ads that make you feel like you're choosing a health care provider or baby powder.
I see no problem with such an undertaking, per se. After all, these are public court records, and if someone wants to pay others to get the info for them, fine. But I do have a problem with
It's certainly a gray area, ethically. All I can do is not patronize them, and hopefully they'll go away or take a low profile.
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wcb
Gosh, everyone is so focused on what a dangerous thing this could be. But let's think about the positive applications of this. For instance, let's say you are a crime lord, and you're looking to expand. Now, dice.com isn't exactly going to be able to handle your particular staffing needs. Well now you can just plug into CrimeNet and get yourself a listing of hundreds of potential employees!
I don't think it will be possible to have privacy in the information age, the best we can hope for is that nobody (not even our government) will have privacy,
That's the position originally put forward by
David Brin, right?
OTOH, long time ago I read a science fiction story on similar lines. In it a kind of a time machine was developed that allowed people to watch anything in the past (but not interact with it). The use of the machine was heavily restricted. A couple of guys thought this was unfair and, to put it in contemporary terms, posted the blueprints of the machine to the 'net. Well, it turned out that the machine could go no deeper than about a hundred years into the past, but it was most useful for watching what has happened a second ago -- it was a total surveilliance device -- and now everybody and his dog could easily have one. The final words of the story were: "Welcome to the new world. I hope you like living in an aquarium".
Most people would recoil in horror from this idea, but consider what kind of a society would result from this.
I have considered it, and I didn't like it one little bit. I don't think that losing one's privacy is compensated by other people losing it, too.
we may not have a choice in the matter.
And why not? Technological inevitability doesn't mean social inevitability. It has been technically feasible to control people by embedding electrodes in their brain for a fairly long time. Somehow the practice didn't become widespread.
In any case, I'm not going to stick a camera out of my bedroom window, even if I could sell the footage to somebody.
"And now, the latest spring styles of the Darth Vader-type helmets..."
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
I know this story is going to get a lot of posts, so I want to get straight to the point: This is a HORRIBLE idea... and I'm saying this from the "well duh department" because we can only scratch the surface on what the implications of something this big are. Say I go to work for company X, and they dig up a 3 year old list of speeding tickets on me (hey, it's a misdemeanor in many US States). So now I'm getting rejected a because of some arbitrary crap that doesn't even matter to my work performace? Ok, another scenario for you to think about: I'm a typical programmer going out for a quick 3AM meal and I get arrested because I fit a profile (it's a stretch, but not really), I get processed and released but then 3 months down the line... BAM, my face is in the database. Now I know that in certain agencies (Experian/Equifax), you can get these things cleared up, but that can take months.
Any body wanna guess what happens when you have bad credit? Not *that* big of a problem.
Anybody wanna guess what happens when you get arrested for a crime (and processed)?
I think they need to put the privacy checks in place before they actually start selling my personal life (true or not).
Hammer of Truth
In the USA, I believe that many states make criminal and court records to be public records. In the state of Texas, you can look up criminal records (for a small fee) or sex offender information (for free). There is a disclaimer on the site warning about trying to use information based solely upon a person's name. Personally, I believe that court records should be a matter of public record.
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"Go Metallica. Die RIAA." -- Linus Torvalds
CrimeNET, as stupid as they are, is simply a compilation of all the crime information from newspapers ect. This information is already in the public domain and is freely avaliable.
To all those people holding flamethrowers, remember that this is not providing police crime records. If anyone commits a crime serious enough to get themselves into a newspaper, then maybe the stigma should stick to them.
PS. Newspapers don't really care very much about minor crimes, so I wouldn't worry about speeding tickets (unless the police were chasing you) and other minor offenses
Yeah, don't shoot me for watching it, I was eating.
There were two site, this CrimeNet one, and another, even worse one that was called "World Wide Records" or something.
This second one allowed you to submit people you claimed had not payed debts to you, and then rewards would be payed for finding them. The details could include pictures.
Fortunatly, it seemed that the Privacy Commisioner (toothless though he might be) though that it would break existing laws, mainly because it had to do with peoples credit history, which strict laws exist about.
The owner of the business didn't seem worried, though. He's in my city, too - maybe I should go and see what the real story is.
(Note: I might have got this story a bit wrong in places.. I wasn't paying a huge amount of attention, and "Today Tonight" isn't known for accurate reporting, anyway)