Doug
-
01:53:21 pm on February 26, 2001 | # |
The issue of whether or not to make court records available online is a thorny one. On the one hand, Federal law dictates that these documents be publically accessible, and they can be retrieved already by making a physical trip to the appropriate courthouse. On the other hand, putting them online removes most of the barriers that keep the merely curious or those looking to use these documents for nefarious purposes from quickly and easily accessing them. As citizens, we’re entitled to have access to them, and access to public records is a vital part of a functioning democracy. As individuals, we want to be able to protect our privacy and our identity. In the case of online court records, these two impulses smack head-on into each other
What this screams to me is that we need some genuine privacy legislation in the U.S., legislation that accurrately spells out what sorts of personal information must be protected and what information I, as both a citizen and an individual, can keep private. The current state of affairs means we have to make these decisions on a case-by-case basis, and we end up with a bunch of contradictory outcomes. No one can keep it straight, and no one can be sure what bits of their personal information can be easily retrieved online. This just isn’t a stable situation, and it’s opening up entire new areas of crime and potential crime, such as identity theft.
Personally, I’d like to see court records online, but I think personal information (such as Social Security numbers) need to be masked or withheld. In a lot of cases, corporate court records are already online, and I’ve had occasion to use them. It’s a problem, however, if personal information can be gleaned from such records that open up a person to exploitation
