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Mug-Shot Industry Digs Up Your Past, Charges You To Bury It
An anonymous reader writes "Exploiting Florida's liberal public-records laws and Google's search algorithms, a handful of entrepreneurs are making real money by publicly shaming people who've run afoul of Florida law. Florida.arrests.org, the biggest player, now hosts more than 4 million mugs. On the other side of the equation are firms like RemoveSlander, RemoveArrest.com and others that sometimes charge hundreds of dollars to get a mugshot removed. On the surface, the mug-shot sites and the reputation firms are mortal enemies. But behind the scenes, they have a symbiotic relationship that wrings cash out of the people exposed."
They'll either get sued out of existence, someone will discover that what they're doing is illegal (or will be made illegal) and they'll be shut down, or someone will find them and beat the living shit out of them and/or burn them to the ground. One way or another, don't think they'll be around long.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Simplest way to put activity like this is to choke the flow by charging for access to each individual record. Millions of records suddenly costs tens of millions of dollars, making this kind of activity economically unattractive.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Seriously, my charges were dropped but they're still on this page..
Better still only show the mugshots of those who actually are convicted. Arrests are not convictions. Innocent until proven guilty.
I'm not going to rely on these sites for a background check. If someone's not on there it doesn't mean they didn't do anything. It just means they paid to have them removed.
So why pay to remove myself?
If you are arrested but not convicted, why should that be a matter of public record at all? People get arrested and then released without charge all the time. Why should this continue to haunt them?
Just because a police officer decided to arrest you that doesn't make you a criminal. Does it?
Confused...
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
If one has a reputation to protect, perhaps one should not be doing things that will get one arrested, such as possessing illegal substances or soliciting prostitutes.
If the person cared about his reputation, he would be thinking more about his actions. Why should the government care more about the reputation of a person than the person himself?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Their own fault? Innocent people get arrested all the time. Some innocent people even get convicted. But a lot of arrests never end up going to trial because they are released because the arrest was bogus.
An arrest is a public event and having the arrest public allows for victims and witnesses, both for and against the suspect, to come forward, and, most importantly, prevents secret arrests and detentions. Which would you rather have, yourself or a friend arrested and their arrest public record, or you or a friend disappearing by being arrested and held for six months without charge?
It is not the fault of the government that people today automatically assume one is guilty if one is arrested. That is the fault of the entertainment industry and education system.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I disagree. It's important that the public are able to see who is being arrested, to keep the police accountable. If you can look at arrest records and conviction records, then you can see (for example), if the police are arresting a lot more people of a particular minority group than they are convicting. The problem is not releasing arrest records, it's the assumption that arrest equals guilt. The released arrest records should have to contain details of whether the person was convicted, and if they were not then stripping this information from the record and presenting it in a way that implies that the arrested person is a criminal should count as libel.
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When earthquakes happen, most people don't die, either, however it's not a good reason against earthquake-proofing buildings.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.