Accessing Public Records in the Digital Age?

A concerned Anonymous Coward asks: "News.com has a story about what happened last week with RootsWeb. The state of California legally sold them the birth records of all Californians born since 1905, and they put the records online. Our Senator, Jackie Speier, immediately took action to stop the selling of these records in electronic form. Should public records (drivers licenses, criminal records, birth/death records etc...) be this accessible? Is it not hypocritical to make these records public but not easily accessible, or does the level of accessibility matter? Does it matter that they want to make this information easily accessible to big businesses (credit card companies, snail mail spammers) but not to the private citizen? Or should all these records just simply not be public?" There's a difference between "publicly available" and "publicly accessible", and there is something to be said about using this information for evil. How can we balance the two? The records should be available, yes, but only accessible to people who might need it (hint: not spammers and resellers). This issue is currently under debate in New York, as well.

Comments

Also in Oregon

[imrdkl]

See this article from last week. Everything from secureId to distribution rights is discussed.

Swedish law

[Iamthefallen]

Snippet from Swedish Goverment agency concerning electronic storage and handling of personal data(pdf file):

Section 11
Personal data may not be processed for purposes concerning direct marketing, if the registered person gives notice in writing to the controller of personal data that he/she opposes such processing.

One of many many restictions regarding storage of personal data that exist here, basically, you can't store data about someone unless they agree to it. If they do, you can't share it with someone else unless they agree. You can't make it public nor store it in an unsafe manner. All to protect the individual from having various (commercial) forces build a profile that can be used|shared|sold to benefit them.

To be honest I'm surprised that the US doesn't seem to have as strong a protection, an interesting battle between commercial forces and individual integrity for sure.

Re:Well, you can get rich people's SSNs from the S

[TinWeasle]

It's even more absurd to know that you can get the SSN of anyone sharing your name (or the name of someone whose SSN you know).

When my father died, my mother did a search on his name at the Social Security Administration site, and got back 17 ( seventeen )pages of men with the same first and last names, with SSNs, DOBs, and last known residences. That from a 65 yo lady who doesn't want to deal with the computer unless it's running a bluescreen session of DOS Word Perfect.