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.

Comments

Re:Privacy

[Holmwood]

Fair question. I like privacy.

I also don't like the idea of some bureaucracy's picture of me defining me, especially if it's distorted.

I lean, slightly, to a libertarian perspective. Your mileage may vary; fair enough.

I really don't like the idea in our hyper-sensitive culture of some one (say) being able to look up (and granted, not all of these can be looked up -- at present) my ethnicity, my voting history, or every letter/report/form I've had to file with the government, whether or not I belonged to a gay/straight alliance in high school, or a Christian fellowship club in university. Or whether I asked for the Kosher or the Halal meal on my last airline flight.

These, frankly, are no one's business but my own, my family's and close personal friends.

I see data-mining as an expanding source of derivative information about people, to a disturbing degree.

There certainly are legitimate things (in my personal view) for people to know about. Does someone have a criminal record? Are they a sexual predator? Child molester? Have they been disbarred? What is their credit history (if a lender).

But I don't see increasing governmental information -- even if its universally accessible -- on us all as a uniform positive.

Let me now turn the question back on you. Do you? If so, can you please elucidate?

Porn

[Hao Wu]

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.