Slashdot Mirror
How Public Should Public Records Be?
Hobobo writes: "This article on the New York Times talks about whether public records that are available in local government offices should or shouldn't be available online. It also talks about the "practical obscurity" of people checking files in police offices and whatnot, and public records on the internet are "too public," and the privacy and freedom of information issues involved." If you'd like to try it, you can use "Giuliani" and "5/28/44".
For example:
It doesn't take long to come up with 10 or 15 names.
A quick Google search for their name and the word "birthdate" gave me all I needed to find their home address using this site.
Some of them may think that this knowledge is not public, and they're the ones for whom information is most easily available, since celebrity birthdates are very easily found.
This certainly isn't the worst problem with this site. I think private citizens deserve privacy more than celebrities, who did, after all, make the decision to be known publicly, but theirs are the easiest birthdates to find.
I ran for school board a few years back and I needed a list of registered voters in my district. I had to pay the county $100. Not a lot, but it represented 10% of what we had to spend on the campaign. I clearly had a need to know and it rankled me that some bureaucrat had decided that candidates should have to pay $100 for a floppy that took 2 minutes to produce. It boiled down to a tax on challenging the incumbents.
As a public service, I publish California high school SAT scores. Every year, it's like pulling teeth to get the state to relinquish the data. We go round the bush with the same arguments each year and then they finally let me have the data. It's obvious they don't like what I do with the data, but then, is it their right to deny access?
We operate a tutoring business that uses computers to grade some 500 tests per week. We think what we're doing has a real effect on children's ability to compute and that it's positively correlated with their math test scores. We've needed access to data for years to test that hypothesis but privacy concerns thwarted that access. This year, we finally gained access and sure enough, our hypothesis was confirmed. Those data not only showed us we're on the right track, they also suggested changes in what we're doing. Was the public interest better served by denying access?
In the end, it comes down to "who decides what you should be allowed to know?" Given their druthers, most agencies would rather they decide, even if their decision is not in the public interest.
Yeah, but I suppose you can get an unlisted number.
Luxembourgish P&T (national telephone operator, who is now also an ISP) is far worse: even if you had an unlisted number, people could still can find you address on P&T's website! You could opt out of that one too, but you had to know about this page. Moreover, those who opted out would get no personal web hosting space.
Well, on one hand, they are Public records... that's pretty clear. Public does mean Public.. why should I have to inconvenience myself by driving 3 counties over to get some files at city hall, when I could just look it up on the internet from anywhere?
Which brings us to the other hand; the fact that said information is somewhat obscure in practice. You have to go out of your way to get it; it's been that way for a long, long time, so putting these records on the internet WILL change the way information is used.. it IS different.
I think the real answer is both a) Yes, if it's on the Public record, it should be available to anyone free, online... and...
b) Given this, we should re-think what should be public record and what shouldn't.
Remember, those in power can find things out about you a lot faster than you can find things out about them simply because they know where to look. This would even the playingfield.