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Google Pushes To Open Public Records
AlHunt sends us an AP story on Google's push to help states open up their data to online searchers. Google is going about this in an evenhanded way, according to the story, and the results of its labors — initially in Arizona, California, Utah, and Virginia — will be available to all search engines, not just theirs. The move is being hailed by groups such as OpenTheGovernment.org, but the Electronic Privacy Information Center expressed concerns, given what they call Google's "checkered past" with regard to privacy on the Internet.
Now not only are my stupid usenet posts from the early 1990s going to be available, so are my other "youthful indescretions". Great.
We're going to change governments from Corporate Republic to Virtual Democracy! Then we'll build the Nanopedia wonder.
So when are Google, the Library of Congress and the CIA going to combine and be simply known as the CIC?
(Literary reference. Hope I didn't get first post.)
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
If privacy advocates are concerned about public records becoming more easily accessible, they should get laws passed that limit the collection of such data by the government. It seems like Google gets the criticism because their search engine is too good at doing what it is designed to do.
Where our government claims copyright on court cases and findings and other public documents. If you want a document, you order it from Go Print. There's libraries in our court houses, like most the rest of the civilized world, but if you go in there in a pair of jeans the librarian will come over and ask if they can "help" and then ask you if you are a law student, and then ask you if you are a lawyer, and then ask you to leave.
Thankfully you can still read the laws without paying the government for a copy of them.
How we know is more important than what we know.
What the fuck are you on about exactly?
Way to rant.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Dear god, now anyone will be able to read public records. What is the world coming to?
New tags to search for, like Mother's maiden name, social security number, schools attended and the name of the first pet, of the first car. A Google spokesman said, "You dont have to click on the phishes any more, we provide all they need ourselves!"
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
We've always maintained this weird security-through-obscurity dichotomy with public records. Technically the information is available to everyone by law, but it's such a pain to get it that nobody bothers
This has given people a false sense of security when it comes to government data collation. I don't think most people realize just how much public information this out there that anyone with a few bucks and who knows who to ask can see it. On the flip side, it means there's almost no public benefit from the government keeping the information because it can't be easily collated by a private citizen.
This is the best thing that could happen--let's dump it all out on the net and make it easy to see someone's entire public record. Let's go for complete transparency and let public information really be public information. If the government really is overreaching, the outrage should be enough to throttle them back. And maybe they aren't; maybe this really is in the public interest. Now we can find out. Either way, it's going to force a resolution.
On another positive side note, this'll also gut the cottage ripoff industry that's grown around public records research. You shouldn't have to pay some PI wannabe $$ to walk across the street and meet his records-room friend at the Capitol.
Can U spell hypocracy?
I don't therefore I'm not.
The Wisconsin Circuit Court Access (WCCA) ?
:-)
That site allows you to search any court case in WI. There are limitations - minors often aren't on there, and certain other cases are blocked from public access as well. But overall this has been a *good* thing.
Hell, I even once ran a girl I had started dating through there - and turned up three shoplifting convictions.
We always went to her place after that...
Do you think that models and actresses from the 1970s through mid-90s ever imagined their sex scenes would be available for FREE AND EASY download to ANYONE on the planet?
Talk about "youthful indiscretions". That's gotta hurt.
I suggest you read Slashdot
Can U spell hypocracy?
Well, we know you can't.
Those who write the rules know the loopholes. The same applies to software exploits.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Maybe we should make a law that there can be no more laws.
You joke, but I could think of a good law that do almost that. How about a law that states that the number of words that can be used to create laws is now fixed at its current levels. So, pretend that you want to pass a law with 10,000 words in it. That would mean that you would need to either remove a law, or reword a current law such that you free up 10,000 words.
What would be the result? Well, I bet you would find government pork would drop like a rock and laws would become much simpler to understand. Shit, need some words to pass the new health care law? Let's axe an old law giving pig farmer subsidies to do anti-terror research. Trying to pass a new tax bill? If you try and make it archaic and full of loopholes you are going to have to go hack up some OTHER archaic and richly worded law... or just write a simple law that makes sense as a normal human can read.
I could see only good things coming out of this.
I'm tired of sites like Domania or any of a gazillion foreclosure sites make money by selling you information that is of public record. Why do I have to pay to find out if a used car I want to buy has been in an accident, when that information is available in public records? Google is not talking about publishing stuff that isn't already public record -- they're publishing stuff that HAS ALREADY HAD THE MERITS OF BEING PUBLIC DEBATED -- that's how these things became public records in the first place. So, there shouldn't be any more debate about whether or not public records should be public. Or, if there is, the issue is one for your local governing body -- not Google
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
I don't know what was offtopic about the post, except that maybe I went so far as to point out obvious discrepecies in the almighty Googleplex. Nothing against QuantumG, but I wonder what they posted that made things so hated.
So what? I'll post it again.
While Google pushes to open up public records, they neglect to include the X-Originating-IP, or any information which would help e-mail recipients determine where e-mail came from, on e-mail from Gmail. All Gmail e-mail appears to originate from a 10. IP address from within the depths of Google.
I guess it's just a matter of which set of principles is best suited to cover their bu77s, and which set of principles is best suited to generate good press, and which set of principles is best suited to please shareholders, and which set of principles is best suited to serve their business interests. The only dissappointment is that, for the scientific technologist, none of these principles serves to preserve truth and accuracy. The pie is carefully portioned out for only one purpose.
PROFIT.
I'm not opposed to profit. I'm opposed to fraud.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
The Knotty problem becomes one of interconnections. Sure department X needs to know fact A and department Y needs to know fact B, and sure we have laws blocking X from collecting B and Y from collecting A but when all such records are public and publicly searchable then the point is rendered moot, then X can know B and Y can know A and the stalker down the street can know both.
This is, in fact, just what the late and unlamented Total Information Awareness project was all about and what private companies such as ChoicePoint are still about, linking otherwise innocuous information so Big Brother doesn't have to.
As has been correctly noted (e.g. with Census data being used to hunt down Asian-Americans during WWII for no good reason) laws preventing one department from sharing with another are moot when such sharing is possible. They become even more moot when all that it takes is a few seconds with google.
While I agree with you that laws restricting the info collected are and will be a good thing, I feel that they alone are not the sword to cut this Gordian Knot.
I'm sure there will be a steady stream of eager users for stalker.google.com long before it emerges from beta.
I'm guessing that it's cluelessness on the part of Google management, but I hope someone there gives some thought to what will happen to their "do no evil" public image when the body count from their negligence first crests over three digits.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
They are wrong. This is information for the public, not just some jack booted law enforcement agency. So, in my infinite wisdom, I declare that public information being conveniently available to the public is a good thing. Non believers will be summarily executed at midnight.
What?
Google plays along with China in censoring but it lobbys in the US for opening government records? While at the same time its board is advising it's sharholders to not vote for proposals to bar any "proactive" censorship (and Google is censoring a lot)? Google is getting creepy and I already use another search engine to get unbiased results. Google's board objects to anticensorship proposal http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/googles-boar d-objects-anti-censorship-proposal/story.aspx?guid =%7BE4924442-BA3A-4F47-A5B8-DCA66F1A9CB0%7D
They are talking about increasing access to already public records.
There is nothing inherantly "public" about the IP address of the computer I happen to be sitting at when sending an email. You might like to have it for some reason but it is arguably private information, not public.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I'd like to have the name and address of every legitimate business in the United States, for web site legitimacy validation. I've purchased databases which contain an approximation to that information, but that's mostly phone book data, not Government data.
More business records need to be easily available. This varies from state to state now. Corporation records are usually freely available, although a few states (notably Delaware) charge for address information. Every US state has their own format; I've yet to find two states using the same output format on their web site. That's a hassle, but can be overcome.
D/B/A name and business license data is even harder to get. It's public record information, and you can get it from data brokers, but it's fairly expensive and not current.
It's easier for some major countries outside the US. The UK has centralized business registration at Companies House. You can get this kind of information for all the G-7 countries (although not for Russia) and most of the major exporting countries, including China.
I'd much sooner see my tax dollars go to a public information network than corporate favoritism.
... a "public information network" would probably end up costing more than the Apollo program and end up being slightly less effective than Googling yourself.
You say that like they're mutually exclusive.
Such a project, in reality, would be a giant boondoggle; I can almost imagine all the big IT implementors slavering over their keyboards writing up slick proposals for it. But in the end it would be overbudget, incomplete, behind schedule, poorly designed, and nearly impossible for a sane person to use without cringing, just like 99% of everything that's produced according to government specifications.
I've seen the way some much, much more limited projects can go pear-shaped
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Did I just become aphasic or did that make no fucking sense?
Who is to say that Google won't turn their massive amount of data for sale. In essence creating a two tiered search. One for pay and one not for pay. The search market has only a handful of dominant players; fixing prices or services wouldn't be all that difficult.
I have a home loan. The fact that I have a home loan is a public record. The fact that I own a car is a public record. The fact that I am licensed to drive, in most states, is a public record. That I am registered to vote, and my address, is a public record.
All of those things probably should be public - i.e. if a particular party has a particular interest in those records, they should be able to walk down to the county courthouse or town hall or whatever and have access to them.
Historically, records have been public, but NOT EASILY ACCESSIBLE. The cost of accessing each individual record served as a barrier to accessing each record for trivial purposes.
But with technology, that barrier to access can be eliminated. So when accessing public records becomes trivial to do, what happens?
They get accessed for trivial purposes. For example, hardly a day goes by without me receiving some sort of offer to refinance my home loan. Voter registration is a public record. And they must be, if we are to guarantee free elections. But what happens when you can access all voter registrations (including addresses) in the country through Google? It's one thing when you suspect election fraud and have to walk down to the courthouse and inspect records; it's another thing entirely when you can run a query or event 200,000 queries and come up with the name and address of every registered voter in the country.
Just because a record is public does not mean it's a good thing that it can be found on Google.
paintball
I'm guessing that it's cluelessness on the part of Google management, but I hope someone there gives some thought to what will happen to their "do no evil" public image when the body count from their negligence first crests over three digits.
... you meant over 100 Americans. Sorry.
Who says it hasn't already? It's not like the Chinese government is exactly open about how many people it "re-educates," and you really have no idea what level of cooperation their mainland subsidiary has with the government. Even if they're not in triple-digits yet, give them time -- a few hundred Chinese dissidents is nothing compared to all that advertising they'll rake in.
Oh
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
How we know is more important than what we know.
Does this mean I can finally bust my car-thieving neighbors with 10+ drunk drivings for registering cars in my name? Cause currently there is no way to search for cars in your name in California. This should make everyone's car insurance rates go down.
the difference though if you can search the records electronically is that it will be easier to mine the information. that will be very difficult with printed records limiting the scope of malicious activities.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
...is universality. Sort of the same reason some Democrats were pushing for a military draft without as many exemptions--if it applies to everyone, a lot fewer people are willing to go down that road. If everyone's information is available, with no exceptions for being a Senator or CEO of a fortune 500 company or a famous actor or famous conservative talk-show host, then enough important (i.e. rich) people will be opposed to scuttle it and inadvertently protect the privacy of us little people. But if your military record can magically become inaccessible, or the number of times you've been arrested for DUI can vanish, just because you're running for President, then we're screwed because the rest of us will still have no privacy. The only way to defeat the encroachment is to make the loss of privacy universal.
"I have a home loan. The fact that I have a home loan is a public record."
[...]
"Historically, records have been public, but NOT EASILY ACCESSIBLE."
I have a home loan too. I receive at least 1 offer to refinance or to open equity line of credit in my mail everyday.
Seems to me, the information was VERY ACCESSIBLE to obtain.
Off course, its not easily accessible by you and me, we would need to go find the proper county office, and the proper hours of operation of the service, which of course would be during work hours to find anything about it.
But those freaking lenders, they can pay some people who compile databases. The information is out there already accessible easily, just not to you.
This is wrong. If its public record I should be able to access it easily. I hope one day I can google my name and see what others are already seeing behind my back.
When will Google be a bit more open about itself ?
An ex-girlfriend found me through public records. At the time I had an unlisted phone number and you could not find enough information online that I posted to get a street address, let alone what city and county I lived in.
How did she do it? Simple, many of the counties in my area post tax records for land, fully searchable. She simply picked county after county until she got mine. (its not good to have an uncommon last name)
So she not only had my street address she also could approximate my net worth based on the property values. It was even easy for her to tell how long I lived there.
The government is only concerned at laws restricting private companies and your information because they can take money from them when these companies screw up. Whereas themselves are immune to it, after all people are fallible.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Can I smack you with a dead fish?
I don 't own a home yet I get offers to refinance my home weekly. When my car loan was about to hit 3 years I started getting offers to refinance and extend my warranty. I have never voted, yet when i changed counties that I lived in I was suddenly called to jury duty for the first time. I discovered the local county already data mines the DMV looking for new people for jury duty.
What's the difference. companies and governments already data mine the public record. Oh and there are no barriers, that is an illusion that you are hanging on to. I want to be able to know information is being known about me, so I can hide it easier. I can't data mine about myself without lots of tedious work. 50 years ago all this information was still there. It was just done on paper. It was still legal to go looking through it. It just took longer.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The move is being hailed by groups such as OpenTheGovernment.org, but the Electronic Privacy Information Center expressed concerns, given what they call Google's "checkered past" with regard to privacy on the Internet.
Google's mandate is "to organize the world's information". Like it or not, this includes information about you. If there is stuff about you that you don't want Google to know, don't put it on the Internet and don't give it to anyone who could possibly one day leak it to the internet (i.e. the government).
Everything else is fair game. Including that time back in the 80's when you were arrested for snorting coke.
Now if there is real private info, like SSNs that the government needs and you don't want leaking, then the answer is simply pass laws disallowing anyone from sharing SSN info. No one outside the government, banks, and yuour employer should even be allowed to know your SSN in the first place.
Start with the premise that every piece of information that is out there is "yours".
If you track a person for any reason, you must let that person know you're tracking them and what information you have about them. Even government.
That's all. Beyond that, you just need to let human nature and outrage do the rest. The privacy issue will be sorted out properly in no time.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Great idea, yet another law that would be impossible to enforce. And if you think the government would abide by it, I've got a bridge to sell you. Before it could even be debated, it would require an escape clause for government agencies.
Clearly he has never seen 70's porn.
We do NOT need that stuff resurfacing.
While the social security number issue is important, it barely scrapes the surface when it comes to the dangers of doing this.
Open government records exist to ensure government accountability.
For example, court records exist to prove that the operations of the courts are fair, impartial and proper.
However, when incorporated into private databases (in this I include search engine indices) the character of these records changes tremendously. For example, if you are sued by your landlord, future landlords will be able to search the records, using it as an intelligence database on you, not a record of the operation of the government. Likewise, if you had a disgruntled employee who files complaints about alleged violations of state regulations, then potential employees and investors could be deterred from doing business with you.
Placing public records in private datasets alters the nature of the records.
The problem is that in the US, the legal notion of privacy is broken. It was broken by technology.
In the US, we have a libertarian notion of privacy that is based on some simple dichotomies: public/private, disclosed/undisclosed. Information is either of a public nature, in which case it is fair game to ferret out and publish, or it is of a private nature, in which case you are protected from intrusion. It is either undisclosed, which means that if it is of a private nature it is safe, or it is disclosed, in which case anybody who has the data in hand is welcome to publish it to the world. The only exception are those who have a specially recognized duty of confidentiality, such as doctors and lawyers.
The reason that this is a libertarian notion is that it seeks to preserve the freedom of anybody who receives data to do whatever they please with it. That is why when you give your name and address to a vendor, that vendor can turn around and sell that information, as well as information about what you have purchased, to somebody else. While US law forbids using this information in a credit report, it does not clearly forbid using it for investigative purposes such as a background check. Even if you construe a usage of this information as a violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, since it is not part of your credit report, you have no way of knowing that it is being used in a background check or by identity thieves or stalkers.
Our notions about privacy tend to be centered around the concepts of non-disclosure, but the issue of privacy is much deeper. Privacy, in my view, is the right of the individual to choose and act autonomously without unreasonable interference by outside parties. Limiting informational privacy to protection of non-disclosed facts falls far short of protecting what we expect privacy to secure, which is nothing less than individual liberty. Nowhere is the threat to individual liberty greater than in the use of government records for purposes other than ensuring the proper operation of government. As an individual, you are not free to avoid appearance in such records. If you are sued, your name, address, and information about your doings goes into a public record. This is true even if you are subpoenaed. What is worse, individual bits of data about you can be assembled from various public record sources to create a picture of your private life, even if no single fact in isolation reveals much.
In 1972, the US Department of Health Education and Welfare published a report called "Records, Computers and the Rights of Citizens". It was a very early look into the impact of computer record keeping on privacy. The report, started under Secretary Elliot Richardson, recognized the privacy dangers inherent in using data for purposes other than. Richardson, whose integrity and impartiality was widely admired on both sides of the isle, left his position in HEW to take over as Attorney General during the mushrooming Watergate scandal, and he was replaced by Caspar Weinberger, known to current generations as an early
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Looks like this one gets the "googleisgood" tag
But I find the number of pieces of information that State, Federal, state-funded bodies, and legislative mandates (e.g. corporate information gathering and disclosure pursuant to governmental affirmative action directives) require from you seems to be going up and up. This is rather disturbing.
I don't find it at all disturbing if public corporations are required to operate in full public view.
And, frankly, I think it wouldn't hurt if a lot of "private" information were public as well. For example, why shouldn't everybody's tax returns be a part of the public record?