California Court Posts SSNs, Medical Records

Lucas123 writes "California's Riverside County Superior Court's Web site is serving up document images containing SSNs and detailed medical records relating to civil cases, according to a couple of privacy advocates. All of the documents are free to anyone who knows where to look for them. 'Searches done on the court's Web site turned up various documents related to civil cases that contained sensitive information. Included were complete tax filings, medical reports pertaining to cases handled by the court, and images of checks complete with signatures as well as account and bank-routing numbers.'"

Comments

Individuals are the only ones who care

[rbanzai]

Only YOU care if your information is made public. There is absolutely no reason for any public or private organization to give a shit, and they make that evident over and over. Until it is more cost effective for them to protect the info than to leak it they will continue to do so. And that's never going to happen.

Enter legislation

[Nerdposeur]

Until it is more cost effective for them to protect the info than to leak it they will continue to do so.

Which is why we need legislation that will fine them for releasing that information.

Another idea would be to demote the person who made the decision to post that stuff publicly to Official Identity Theft Aftermath Cleanup Technician.

Re:Enter legislation

[frosty_tsm]

Official Identity Theft Aftermath Cleanup Technician.

Better would be a demotion to "Public Toilet Cleanup Technician"... "Official Public Toilet Aftermath Cleanup Technician"?

Re:Enter legislation

[zymurgyboy]

A leak would be one thing; these muppets INTENTIONALLY POSTED this stuff. From TFA:

But the court's IT director defended the practices, saying that documents are being posted on the Web site in accordance with California laws and that finding data such as Social Security numbers is akin to "finding a needle in a haystack."

Wow.

You know, just because something can be done, doesn't mean it is necessarily to be done. This guy may want to take a look at Maryland's case search engine to see an example how someone with some sense would do it. Jeebus.

Meanwhile....

[Otter]

Meanwhile, in Italy, the outgoing government posts everyone's income and tax data. Deputy Economic Minister Vincenzo Visco bizarrely explains:

This already exists all around the world, you just have to watch any American soap to see that.

SCrubing SSN's is not the answer

[geekoid]

the answer is to stop using them for credit scores and ID.

Court Information is public record

[PhreakOfTime]

While it is unfortunate that such things as SSN's are being made public, the hard reality is that anything contained in a court record is public information.

Open access to government is a two way street, and is meant to prevent corruption and give the public a clear view what their government is doing.

On a side note, my county also publishes court records on the internet that are public information. However, it is limited to the court schedule, case#, charge, and attorney schedule.

The fact that this schedule is public information is still not a concept some people are aware of. Ive heard stories from court employees of upset people coming in and demanding that their DUI case be taken down from being publicly viewable. Unfortunately for these people, the law says otherwise.

I even have personal experience in some of the reactions people have to this publicly available information after I posted a link to the county courthouse on one of my websites. A Company called Caton Commercial even went to far as to have their attorney draft a cease and desist letter threatening me with legal action, and demanding that I remove this linked information, and turn over my legal domains to them to stop this 'knowingly libelous' action. Although, Im not sure that they thought through how they were going to present to a judge their case that the courts own website schedule was the source of this so-called libelous information. Like every other company before that has failed to grasp the concept of the internet, all the attention this brought to the linked information was a lovely demonstration of the 'Streisand Effect'. Once again, adding more weight to the phrase 'more dollars than sense'.

Violation of federal law:

[Rageon]

I can't imagine this will last long, as it's a clear violation of federal law. I work for a court, and we ALWAYS need to redact SSN from every order (unless it's just being disclosed to that specific person). It's against state law here, but also federal. From 42 U.S.C. 405(c)(2)(C)(viii):

Social security account numbers and related records that are obtained or maintained by authorized persons pursuant to any provision of law enacted on or after October 1, 1990, shall be confidential, and no authorized person shall disclose any such social security account number or related record.

So I really can't imagine the court can defend this in any way at all.

Remember kids, wikileaks=wrong, us courts = OK

[plasmacutter]

Remember kids, if you are a public interest blog, you are gagged for simply having the POTENTIAL to release this information.

It's perfectly ok though for the federal government to actually do it.