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Public records can paint an unflattering picture
13:21 30Jun2004
By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON, June 30 (Reuters) - Wondering how much your neighbor's house is worth? Or if he's given any money to a political candidate? Perhaps you'd like to know whether he's ever spent a night in jail, or the real reason behind his divorce.
Questions like these at your next neighborhood barbecue could get you a fat lip. Safer to turn to the Internet, where searchable databases offer an abundance of personal information that, until recently, was tucked away in government storage rooms.
Cities like Boston and Washington, D.C. post assessed home values; Nassau County on New York's Long Island includes color photos of each property.
Local courts across the country often provide access to case files -- from traffic tickets to bankruptcies and child-custody battles -- while the U.S. Bureau of Prisons provides a handy "inmate search form" at its Web site.
Sex-offender databases help citizens watch out for child predators, while campaign-contribution sites help them watch out for Republicans.
Making records like these available to the public is a good way to keep government accountable, experts say.
Property-tax sites help homeowners make sure they are being taxed fairly, for example.
But the "practical inaccessibility" that in the past made paper records relatively private also shielded sensitive personal information from prying eyes.
Some officials now wonder if there is perhaps too much daylight shining on those once-musty files.
"I am not comfortable publishing the Social Security numbers of thousands of people," said Greg Hartmann, who as clerk of courts for Hamilton County, Ohio does just that.
Lawyers and others who deal with county courts on a regular basis appreciate the convenience of online records, but citizens shouldn't be exposed to identity theft as a result, Hartmann said.
Bankruptcy and child-custody records frequently contain the bank-account numbers of those involved, while even traffic cases include Social Security numbers because tickets have not been redesigned to leave out that information, he said.
Hartmann said he would take steps to scrub sensitive information from the county's 5 million online records or protect it with passwords, if the state legislature does not set limits.
So far, few states have figured out where to draw the line.
In Indiana, the state Supreme Court recently approved rules that would put traffic violations, divorce filings, property disputes and custody battles online, while keeping offline many cases involving children, such as adoption records and child-abuse records.
Several other states, including Texas and Minnesota, have set up commissions to study the issue.
In addition to deterring identity theft, limits on personal information could restrain data aggregators that offer individual background checks to employers, landlords and anybody else willing to pay $30, said Chris Hoofnagle, an associate director with the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington.
"Records are often created to ensure government accountability, but that goal has kind of been turned on its head," Hoofnagle said.
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