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Canadian Privacy Czar Wants To Anonymize Court Records On the Web
An anonymous reader writes "The web is evil and must be stopped — because it makes public information too public. So says Canada's Privacy Commissioner. She wants to 'anonymize' court records by substituting initials for names.
The Toronto Star quotes Jennifer Stodddart as saying 'The open court rule, which is extremely historically important, has now become distorted by the effect of massive search engines... Court decisions and other related documents, which contain all sorts of personal information, are now searchable worldwide, which was never intended when openness rules were devised.'
All Stoddart's proposal would do is erect a minor barrier for the techno unsaavy. Researchers, reporters, geeks, and most teenagers would still be able to figure out who's who.
Stoddart seems to believe only in an abstract notion of freedom and access — but only as long as not too many people use it and no one suffers. She cites the case of someone who is upset at reading the divorce case of her parents.
Is Stoddart a danger or a menace? Or just clueless?"
I know someone who works in the court clerk's office of my county, and I can rattle off hundreds of examples of this.
One of the more notable ones was a real estate agent who came into the court and was upset that her case, and arrest, for DUI was posted online on the court schedule. Demands were made that this information not be published because the person was worried about how it would affect their reputation. I honestly dont think it ever occured to them to avoid the actual driving while intoxicated to avoid that damaged reputation. Only the publishing of that information was what was the problem.
Closer to home, I had posted a listing of all the court cases of a local real estate agency. Some of them arbitration cases, and some of them small claims cases. All that was posted was an exact copy of the information from the court website. This was up for about 6 months when I received a letter from an attorney DEMANDING I take the information down because it was 'making knowingly libelous claims'.
It gets worse. In the Cease and Desist letter, the demands were for me to turn over my domain names to this company free of charge, or they were going to move forward with criminal charges against me. Needless to say, I ignored the letter. Suprisingly, I never heard from them again. But that might be because I decided to post the nice Cease and Desist letter online that was sent by Caton Commercial. I can only imagine the point at which they realized that it might have been a bad idea to bring MORE attention to what they were trying to keep hidden.
To this very day, simply typing in the company name "Caton Commercial" into Google, returns the courthouse website and schedule with all their cases listed in the #2 spot. The 'streisand effect' is a beautiful thing to watch unfold sometimes. If you doubt the story, you can always type it in and see for yourself.
Court records are often sealed in order to protect (for example) trade secrets. Whole massive swaths of information that would be public under any other circumstances, gone in the name of a profit. Children involved in proceedings are also anonymized, on various beliefs about what children should and shouldn't have to endure.
Ummm, sealed court records aren't put on the internet, only the public ones.
This proposal may be flawed, but it's nice to see someone talking about history versus technological reality. I'm hesitant to say that it's a great idea, to make information harder to get out of the government, but regardless of the weakness of the proposal, she's talking about a very interesting problem.
No, she's a moron. There is a vital public interest in seeing that justice is done. Otherwise you wouldn't know about a poor guy in Florida who was convicted for possession of a number of oxycodone pills. The fact that he had a valid prescription from a licensed doctor and it was filled by a licensed pharmacist was irrelevant under Florida law (and the court followed the law). Without journalists, bloggers and other busybodies talking about it, the law won't get changed.
If it's a public government record, then it should be public. If it needs to be confidential (and some things should be), then make it confidential. But don't pretend that making you walk down to the courthouse and pay a $10 photocopy fee makes it confidential.
Otherwise you're just creating a publishing industry of people (like Lexis) who gather all the court records and resell them (for much more than $10).
It's the indexing of personally identifyable (sp?) information by third parties that is the issue. I hate to take the side of Ms. Stoddart (and the goverment) here, but she makes a valuable point. Example- I would hate for a court case between myself and my neighbor over the height of my hedges in Toronto to hurt my possibilities for a job in Florida all because an employer decided to google "my name". If the employer really wants to know, they can do a little leg work and go through the proper legal channels to find out. Otherwise they are jst fishing for dirt, and the indexing of your life on the web isn't helping your prospects.
The limited sh*t that shows up under my name in google now is scary- and I have never been directly involved in legal matters (outside of a speeding ticket). Even if google doesn't index the site, someone else will, and google will index them.
I wouldn't be so paranoid if I had not seen my own managers do google searches of names directly off resumes, then pass/circular file them based on info retrieved that may not even be that of the person who submitted the resume!
Never trust anyone who takes pride in being called a 'geek'....
Guys, Canada has freedoms that Americans would love to have returned after DCMA, FISA, Patriot, and TSA. I have lived here for two years, from Texas, and the sense that you are in control of your own info is a comfort and a relief. Visa does not have the right to my Social Security number (SIN) and my pile of junk mail is very small. No corporation or governmental agency is invading my life, checking my credit, or calling me every hour. Freedom from government and corporations is just as important as freedom of speech. Freedom reigns here in Canada. Put your personal info on a web searchable public record and every tele-vendor will be calling.
Privacy is a fundamental right guaranteed in the 4th and 9th amendments to the US Constitution and everyone in the US is so used to being Pwnd by corporations and governmental agencies that they've forgotten that no one has a right to your personal info... no one.... ever.
My court record doesn't say anything other than I was arrested, after that it just drops off. Gave me hell trying to join the army because no one wanted to provide them information on why they dropped the charges.
And I'm sure the court record would say "innocent" on lots of potential employees.
Course I wouldnt employ them. If someones had some drug charges thrown out, then they are less desirable than another potential employee that isn't the sort of bloke whos accused of being a dealer.
I'm sure it will be illegal to discriminate too. Just like the same laws that never seem to force me to have an ugly PA ;)
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
Which is why when I was misidentified as the Assailant in a case I insisted on the whole thing being expunged from the records. I have a clearance and a felony assault would rather ruin that..
Slightly complicated, but the officer mixed up the report and identified me as the attacker/
The DA balked, because it would have meant he could not read the police reports, look at the evidence, and see that the officer screwed up the names.
Anyway, a threat of suing for malicious prosecution and a few stern looks from the judge (ok, mostly the judge) meant I got my case removed from the records.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Two situations come to mind. Here in the UK (don't know about anywhere else) when a woman accuses a man of rape, her name is withheld from reporting, but the (often innocent) mans name is open to the world. Now that is wrong, and is used in malicious accusations again and again, especially when the accused is famous/rich. This needs to change - either both the names are published or neither. When the court has decided then the guilty party has their name published whoever that is. At present the womans name is withheld, even after a failed prosecution.
Also, there was a story the other day about a wealthy executive who was murdered in her home. The story mentioned that she was married and her husband (47) was a car dealer. The story later mentioned that the police were holding a 47 year old man for questioning !!!
What is the point of withholding the names if you give so many blatant clues that a child could figure it out ?
I think you missed the entire point of his post.
Fact is that with a choice between the person who went to court for X and was found not guilty, and the person who didn't, the vast majority of companies would pick the person who didn't, even if they were not as suitable for the job as the person who did.
A workaround would be that any defendant found not guilty could request reasonable anonymisation of the court papers presented to the internet. The court proceedings would be available, but an innocent person's life would not be ruined because of the false accusation / poor police work / etc.
Would it make a difference to you if it were only the names of private individuals that were anonimized and not those of corporations?
Fanatically anti-fanatical