Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
company names mentioned herein are for identification and educational purposes only and are the property of, and may be trademarks of, their respective owners.
Citation preview
PUBLIC RECORDS ON THE INTERNETCourts and government agencies at all levels of government local, state, andfederal are increasingly making public records available on web sites. Somejurisdictions are just beginning, while others have done so since the mid1990s.There are two ways public records are accessible electronically. Some jurisdictionspost them on their government web sites, thereby providing free or lowcost accessto records. Government agencies and courts also sell their public files tocommercial data compilers and information brokers. They in turn make themavailable on a fee basis, either via web sites or by special network hookups. Thefollowing are examples of public records containing personal information availableremotely via electronic access.
● Property tax assessor files. Typical records contain name of owner,description of property, and the assessed value for taxation purposes. Somesystems even provide blueprints of the property.
● Motor vehicle records registration, licensing, and driver history information(varies by state).
● Registered voter files (restricted in some states).● Professional and business licenses.● Court files:
○ Case indexes○ Tax liens and judgments○ Bankruptcy files○ Criminal arrest and conviction records, and warrants○ Civil court recordings.
As I stated in the introduction, the reason that public records are public isunassailable so we the people can monitor our government. Public recordsprovide notice to all members of society of the official actions taken by government.They also provide notice of the "official" status of individuals and property. Makingpublic records accessible to citizens via the Internet is a powerful way to arm peoplewith the tools to keep government accountable.But public records also contain a great deal of information about individuals, oftenvery sensitive information. The following examples refer to court proceedings.
● Court records often contain Social Security numbers (SSNs) and financialaccount numbers. These are commonly available in divorce decrees, childcustody cases, and bankruptcy filings. But when account numbers, personalidentifiers, and dates of birth are accessible on the Internet, they could beused to commit financial fraud. The crime of identity theft is at epidemicproportions today, fueled in part by easy access to SSNs.
● Family law files typically contain information about children as well asallegations whether accurate or not of wrongdoing and negligence bywarring spouses.
● When aggrieved insurance holders sue the insurance company over medical
payment claims, the details of their medical conditions are likely to becomepart of the court record and thereby public. It is a common tactic ofcompanies to threaten to bring highly sensitive medical information, as wellas other personal matters, into the case in order to discourage the plaintifffrom proceeding.
● For example, in a prominent case of alleged identity theft negligence, thedefendant, a credit bureau, obtained the plaintiff's gynecological records inorder to attempt to show that she was mentally unbalanced and that herclaims had no merit.
● In a dispute with a neighbor, or a business dispute, many allegations can bemade that might not be true.
● In employmentrelated matters such as sexual harassment cases, it iscommon for the defendant to divulge damaging allegations about the plaintiff,such as lifestyle and sexual history.
● In criminal cases, the statements of victims and witnesses become part ofthe public file. These often contain highly sensitive personal information.Witnesses' personal safety can be at risk in some cases if their identities arerevealed.
It is important to note that in the majority of situations, providing personal informationto government agencies and courts is mandatory. Individuals have no choice in thematter.Providing access to public records on the Internet alters the balance betweenaccess and privacy that has existed in paper and microfiche records. Manycommentators have used the term "practical obscurity" to describe the de factoprivacy protection accorded court documents stored in back rooms and accessibleonly by visiting the courthouse and asking a clerk to retrieve them.NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF ELECTRONIC PUBLIC RECORDSI predict that there will be significant negative consequences to individuals whenpublic records containing personally identifiable information are widely available onthe Internet or via proprietary feebased systems. I list nine such consequenceshere, and then conclude with suggested solutions.
1. Less participation in public life. Fewer individuals will choose toparticipate in government. There is the very real possibility that the continuedgrowth of public records web sites and information services that compilegovernment records from many sources will result in the chilling effect ofpeople choosing not to take part in public life. If the result of participation inpublic life is to lengthen one's electronic dossier and make more personal
information available to whoever wants to obtain it, then it is likely that peoplewill avoid those situations where personal information is gathered.
A former California Secretary of State Tony Miller observed that manypeople do not vote because they do not want their name, address, partyaffiliation and other information publicly available. That is why his officepromoted legislation now law to make the home address confidential. Wehave heard ample evidence from callers to our hotline to support hisobservation. Many other states also impose use restrictions on voterregistration records.
2. Justice only for the rich. Justice will only be available to those with theresources and knowhow to seek private judicial proceedings. Those whocan afford to hire private judges will choose this option in order to keep theirpersonal information out of the public records generated by the traditionalcourt system. Only the rich will be able to safeguard their personalinformation in this manner. Many of those who do not have the means to hireprivate judges will choose not to file suit against their insurance company, forexample, or their abusive employer. We may become a society in which onlythe rich get justice. Indeed, many say we already are.
3. Identity theft. The crime of identity theft and other types of fraud will befueled by easy access to personal identifiers and other personal informationvia electronic public records. Such information includes Social Securitynumbers, credit card and bank account numbers, and details aboutinvestments.
Identity thieves use information such as SSNs and dateofbirth to obtaincredit in another person's name. They purchase goods and services in theinnocent person's name and destroy their credit history when the bills gounpaid.
Identity theft has a devastating effect on its victims. They are unable to obtainhome loans, refinance their homes, purchase vehicles on credit, rent anapartment, even obtain employment. Surveys show that victims must spend agreat deal of time to regain their financial health. A 2004 study by the IdentityTheft Resource found that typical victims spent 100 hours to clean up theircredit report. www.idtheftcenter.org/aftermath2004.pdf. For additionalsurveys, see our web site at www.privacyrights.org/ar/idtheftsurveys.htm.
Identity theft is an opportunistic crime. The majority of criminals obtain thetools of their trade Social Security numbers, credit card account numbers,dates of birth, and mother's maiden names wherever they can find them,for example, by digging through trash and stealing mail. It will not take longbefore identity thieves realize they can find such data much more easily
online via public records. In fact, an Associated Press article in March 2006reported that identity thieves accessed the government web site for HamiltonCounty Ohio to steal Social Security numbers and other personal data ofhundreds of Ohio residents. A federal grand jury indicted eight individualssuspected of operating an identity theft crime ring.www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=48724
4. Destruction of reputations. Individuals will experience shame andembarrassment, even discrimination, when details of their personal lives arebroadcast in court records available on the Internet. The PRC has beencontacted by many individuals who have relayed such experiences.
Reputations will be destroyed because of errors. There is no such thing as aperfect data base. And there are no infallible users of data files. We arealready seeing the growing problem of individuals who are wrongfully linkedto crimes they did not commit because of identity theft. This occurs when animposter uses an innocent person's identifying information whenapprehended by law enforcement. Another scenario is when tax liens andjudgments incurred by the identity thief are listed in the name of the innocentvictim.
In other situations, the background investigator obtains information on thewrong John Doe, not taking adequate care to match the information with thecorrect individual. Another scenario is when the information broker's files arenot up to date and the investigator, perhaps an employment backgroundcheck company, is not informed of acquittals or dismissals. To read thestories of several individuals who have had difficulty obtaining employmentbecause of problems with background checks, read the PRC's comments tothe U.S. Dept. of Justice, submitted August 2005.www.privacyrights.org/ar/DOJbackgrd.htm#9
5. Personal safety risks. Victims and witnesses who are named in courtrecords could be put at risk. The personal safety of victims of domesticviolence and stalking, for example, could be jeopardized. A domesticviolence expert who contacted the PRC told me that many victims of stalkingand domestic violence do not file cases in court because they do not wanttheir private information being in the public arena for fear of it being used bythe stalker to locate and harm them. Witnesses to crimes could also be put inharm's way because of retribution from the perpetrators and other parties tothe crimes.
6. Secondary uses of information. Data from electronic public records fileswill be used for secondary purposes that stray far from the original publicpolicy purposes for which they were first created, that being governmentaccountability. Compiling public records information from several sources
and merging them with commercial sector data files allows the data to besifted and sorted in many different ways. Brand new records are created.The types of uses that can be made of these new records extend far beyondthe original public policy reason for collecting them. A Utah court, forexample, learned that a resort that catered to singles was accessing divorcefiles in order to obtain the names of individuals to receive its marketingsolicitations.
7. Dossier society. But there are far more serious consequences to mergingdisparate electronic files of personal information into massive data bases.We are becoming a "dossier society." Extensive histories whether accurateor not are increasingly available at the click of the mouse to virtually anyone.
Law professor Jeffrey Rosen discusses the negative consequences of adossier society in his 2000 book, The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction ofPrivacy in America. His main concern is the compilation of bits and piecesof information about us from disparate sources, taken out of context, andthen used to form conclusions and make decisions about us. He says:".[W]hen intimate information is removed from its original context andrevealed to strangers, we are vulnerable to being misjudged on the basis ofour most embarrassing, and therefore most memorable, tastes andpreferences." (p.9)He used the subpoenaing by prosecutor Kenneth Starr of Monica Lewinski'sbook purchases from a Washington, D.C., bookstore as an example of howsuch profiling can harm individuals. This occurred during the Clintonadministration sex scandal. Rosen further states:"Privacy protects us from being misdefined and judged out of context in aworld of short attention spans, a world in which information can easily beconfused with knowledge." (p.8)Similarly, law professor Daniel Solove discusses the role of technology inenabling the aggregation of vast amounts of disparate data aboutindividuals. ("Access and Aggregation: Public Records, Privacy, and theConstitution," August 10, 2001, available athttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=283924, and soon tobe published in the Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 86, No. 6, 2002.)"Computer databases contribute significantly to what I call the "aggregationproblem." The aggregation problem stems from the fact that the digitalrevolution has enabled information to be easily amassed together. We oftensprinkle small details about ourselves in a variety of settings as we go aboutour daily lives. .. But imagine if every person or entity we ever came intocontact with during our lives pooled everything that they knew about us. A facthere and a detail there add up." (p.14)Solove coins the term, "digital biographies," to describe the same
phenomenon that Rosen describes as the "dossier society." He outlinesseveral aspects of the digital biography that raise alarm. (pp. 5356)
○ The aggregation of digital biographies by such companies asChoicePoint enables "investigations to be carried out on millions ofinnocent people without any suspicion or oversight by a neutral judgeor magistrate." (pp. 5455)
○ The assemblage of data about us portrays a "distorted persona, onewho is constructed by a variety of external details." (p.55) Our digitalbiography becomes an "unauthorized biography, only partially trueand very reductive." (p.56)
○ Digital biographies are increasingly being used to make importantdecisions about us by employers, marketers, and the government.(p.56)
○ Our digital biographies can expose us to dangers such as identitytheft and stalking. (p.56)
○ Digital biographies are often inaccurate. Solove cites the errors in thedata supplied by ChoicePoint to Florida election officials thatprevented many individuals from voting in the November 2000election. They were wrongfully listed as being felons. (p.56)
○ Solove has since published a book on this subject, The Digital Person:Technology and Privacy in the Information Age (2004).
� Loss of social forgiveness. A particularly troubling consequence ofuntrammeled access to electronic public records is the loss of "social forgiveness."In a dossier society, there is no social forgiveness. Your conviction of graffitivandalism at age 19 will still be there at age 29 when you're a solid citizen trying toget a job and raise a family.
There are precedents for restricting the amount of access to various informationalhistories. One is the rap sheet or criminal history which in California and manyother states is confidential, not public. Juvenile court files are sealed, at least forthose youth not tried as adults. On the private sector side is the credit report.Documentation of a bad payment history can only be kept on the books for sevenyears a bankruptcy for 10 years. In these ways, society allows the possibility"starting over." � Growing numbers of disenfranchised individuals. As a consequence of all the factorsI've raised here, I predict that our society will see a growing number of individualswho are disenfranchised for life. Large numbers will not be able to find employmentbecause of negative information in court files whether true or not from years goneby. Or they will be relegated to lowerpaying jobs in the service industries, unable tobring their true abilities into the employment marketplace. We have been contactedby many such individuals in our tenyear history. I believe, sadly, we will becontacted by many more.
Case in point: Wall Street Journal reporter Ann Davis recently reported on theincreased use of background checks by American companies in the aftermath ofthe terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. She tells the stories of many individualswho have lost their jobs because of relatively minor crimes committed many yearsago.
She quotes Lewis Maltby of the National Workrights Institute: "There are millions ofpeople in America who have done something illegal at some point in their lives. It'sunfair to deny someone a job or destroy their career because of something they did10 years ago that wasn't jobrelated to begin with." (Ann Davis, "Firms Dig Deepinto Workers' Pasts Amid PostSeptember 11 Security Anxiety," Wall StreetJournal, March 12, 2002.)SOLUTIONSWhat can be done to mitigate the negative consequences of making public recordscontaining personal information available on the Internet and from other electronicservices? Governments are not likely to make the decision to keep such records offthe Internet altogether. Indeed, they should not. The public policy reasons for makingpublic records available electronically are irrefutable promoting easier access togovernment services as well as opening government practices to the public andfostering accountability.But there are several approaches government agencies and court systems can taketo minimize the harm to individuals when sensitive personal information is to beposted on the Internet while at the same time promoting government accountability.As above, many of the following points pertain to court files.
1. Limiting what is posted online. Court systems can start by posting only thecourt indexes, registers, and calendars on the web rather than the full texts ofcourt proceedings. Using a "twotier" access policy, the fulltext of, say,divorce records would still be available at the courthouse. Electronic accesswould be limited to the case details names of parties, date of divorce, courtinformation and so on.In an article in the Journal of the American Academy of MatrimonialLawyers, family law attorney Laura W. Morgan espouses the concept of"twotier" access, especially for such court files that contain highly sensitivepersonal information such as divorce records. Morgan points out that divorcerecords may contain a significant number of allegations that are untrue andthat one party has inserted into the file as a form of "gentle extortion,"perhaps to obtain child custody or to be awarded full title to the family home.(Laura W. Morgan, "Strengthening the Lock on the Bedroom Door: The CaseAgainst Access to Divorce Records Online," Journal of the AmericanAcademy of Matrimonial Lawyers (17:1, 2002), p. 64.)
2. Adopting automation systems with redaction features. Court systemscan demand that the automation systems they procure are able to supportflexible redaction features. Such systems should enable sensitive information
to be tagged so that when the files are loaded onto the web site, it is blockedfrom view. Examples of the kinds of data to be redacted are: Social Securitynumbers, credit card and bank account numbers, specific investmentinformation, and medical records information. If computer systems are notyet available that support redaction, court systems should wait until they aremore widely accessible before posting the fulltexts of court documents onthe web.
3. Robust rules of court. Courts must adopt rules that prohibit the mostsensitive of court files including family law cases from being posted in fullon public web sites. The following are useful resources on this topic:
○ The California Judicial Council has recently adopted rules of court(December 2001) that prescribe what types of records can andcannot be accessed electronically by the public.www.courtinfo.ca.gov/newsreleases/NR9101.HTM
○ The Judicial Management Council of Florida released a particularlythoughtful report in November 2001, "Privacy and Electronic Accessto Court Records." Its main recommendation is that "[u]ntil policiesare developed that appropriately balance privacy with access, andwhich support the core mission of the courts to do justice, unrestrictedelectronic access to court records should not be available." (p.2)www.flcourts.org/pubinfo/documents/privacy.pdf.
○ See also the Laura Morgan article on divorce records cited in point 1above.
○ The web site of the Electronic Privacy Information Center contains auseful compendium of reports and news articles in the section on"Privacy and Public Records," available atwww.epic.org/privacy/publicrecords.
○ The Justice Management Institute and National Center for StateCourts have developed guidelines for "Public Access to CourtRecords" at www.courtaccess.org.
○ The Center for Democracy and Technology's report on "ElectronicAccess to State Court Records" can be found atwww.cdt.org/publications/020821courtrecords.shtml.
4. Examining the public policy objectives of online records. Governmentagencies and courts must ask themselves what public policy objectives theyare accomplishing by making records available on the Internet, particularlythose containing personal information. Would there be a way to limit theamount of personally identifiable information posted on the Net withoutundermining the public policy purpose of making records accessible on theagency's website?I suggested in point 1, for example, that courts can choose to post only thecase indexes on the Internet rather than the fulltexts of files. I have yet to heara reasonable explanation for the public policy purpose of posting, forexample, the fulltext files of divorce records online, complete with the
gruesome details of failed marriages. Wouldn't the purpose of notifyingsociety that the marriage between the stated parties has ended as of thespecified date be sufficient detail to be posted online?Another example of restricting online access to certain personal informationis already in practice regarding property tax assessor files. The San DiegoCounty (California) Assessor decided to not post the names of propertyholders on its web site. Rather, users must seek property valuation data bysearching under the address of the property. The primary use of this file, afterall, is to determine the taxable value of property and to check that similarproperty is taxed at the same rate. Name searches are not possible via theweb site, and indeed are not necessary to ensure the policy objective thatproperty is being assessed fairly.The process of analyzing the public policy purposes of certain governmentrecords being public and others not is long overdue. Now that courts andgovernment agencies are grappling with the decision to post their recordsonline is an ideal time to engage in this analysis.Why are Medicare records confidential? Why are tax documents notavailable to the public? Why are other types of government recordsconsidered public? Which records need to be public in order to promotesuch policy objectives as government accountability? Which records shouldnot be released to anyone without the individual's consent? For certain typesof records, can public access be limited to just the key elements of therecords in order for the public policy objective of government accountabilityto be achieved?These questions must be answered in order to make rational decisionsabout posting public records containing personal information on the Internet.
5. Restrictions on access. Courts and other government agencies canrestrict or control access to records in order to protect particularly sensitivepersonal information. This recommendation is proposed by Seton Hall LawSchool professor Daniel Solove in "Access and Aggregation: PublicRecords, Privacy, and the Constitution. (August 10, 2001, available online athttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=283924, and soon tobe published in the Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 86, No. 6, 2002.)He cites numerous cases and provides an extensive analysis of theapplicability of the Constitution to make his arguments, a full discussion ofwhich is beyond the scope of this presentation. In Solove's words:"There is no federal law establishing a baseline for the regulation of publicrecords. Thus, personal information is regulated by a bewildering assortmentof state statutory protections which vary widely from state to state. .. Thischaotic state of affairs is troublesome in an Information Age whereinformation so fluidly passes throughout the country and is being made morewidely available by the Internet and through private companies. The privacy
protection that currently exists for public records is largely designed for aworld of paper records and has been slow to adapt to an age whereinformation can be downloaded from the Internet at the click of a mouse."(p.40)"Do we want to live in a Kafkaesque world where dossiers about individualscirculate in an elaborate underworld of public and private sectorbureaucracies without the individual having notice, knowledge, or the abilityto monitor or control the ways the information is used? Public recordscontribute to this privacy problem because they enable the creation of adossier of personal information about individuals. .. The problem is that, oftenwithout the individual's knowledge or consent, the information is then used fora host of different purposes." (p.45)"It is my thesis that both transparency and privacy can be balanced throughlimitations on the access and use of personal information in public records.Of course, we must rethink what information belongs in public records. Butwe must also regulate the uses of our digital biographies. Government is notdoing enough to protect against the uses of the information that it routinelypumps into the public domain." (p.57)Solove goes on to analyze several prominent court cases and to offerarguments as to why government agencies can restrict or control access inorder to protect personal privacy:" . [T]he government retains significant discretion in how it chooses todistribute its largesse. Public record information is part of this largesse, andthe most recently decided unconstitutional condition cases suggest that thegovernment can impost certain conditions on how this information is usedbefore it makes it available to the public." (p.76)"Both transparency and privacy can be balanced by certain limited accessand use regulations. By making access conditional on accepting certainresponsibilities when using data such as using it for specific purposes, notdisclosing it to others, and so on certain functions of transparency can bepreserved at the same time privacy is protected." (p.78)
6. Anonymizing and aggregating data. To flesh out the previous point, incertain situations access to court and government agency records can beaccomplished by providing them in aggregate form with personal identifyinginformation left out, or by enabling full access under special confidentialityagreements with the court or agency. The result would be to anonymize theinformation that is ultimately made available to the public via news stories oracademic treatises.Investigative reporters or academic researchers might want to analyze trendsin certain types of court cases, for example, divorces. They should have theability to apply to the court for full access to these files, but should berequired to enter into a confidentiality agreement with the court to not publish
personal identifying information and not to share that information with others.Other requests for broadbased access might be fulfilled by the court orgovernment agency by providing aggregate data with personally identifyinginformation removed.Rules of court (see point 3 above) must include provisions enabling accessto multiple files for research and investigative purposes, while at the sametime protecting the privacy of those individuals named in the records.The preceding recommendations pertain primarily to court and governmentagency records. We must also examine those professions that use publicrecords information, namely information brokers and private investigators.
7. Regulating the information broker industry. The information brokerindustry must be regulated. At present, information brokers purchase publicrecords from local, state, and federal government agencies and repackagethem for sale to subscribers. They add data files from commercial datasources such as credit reports and consumer survey data. Virtually anyonecan obtain access to these files, although many information brokers claimthey limit access to professions such as private investigators, attorneys, lawenforcement, media, debt collectors, landlords, and employment backgroundcheckers. However, the effectiveness of such selfregulation is limited atbest.The information broker industry should be regulated much like the creditindustry is governed, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, or FCRA (15 USC1681). The underlying principles that are codified in the FCRA are known asthe "fair information practices," or FIPs. Briefly, such principles include:openness, access to data, correction (data quality), purpose specification,collection limitation, use limitation, security, and accountability. (The PrivacyRights Clearinghouse web site contains a broader discussion of the FIPs, atwww.privacyrights.org/ar/fairinfo.htm.)Individuals must be able to find out when information about them is accessedand for what purpose. They must be able to get access to those datacompilations in order to determine if they are accurate. And they must beable to take legal action when personal data is obtained and disclosed forillegitimate purposes. With the information broker industry largelyunregulated, individuals have little opportunity to know how data about themis used by others, with the limited exception of investigative consumerreports (background checks), discussed in the next point.
8. Closing loopholes in the background check law. The loopholes in thebackground check laws at the federal and state levels must be closed. Thefederal law is the investigative consumer reporting section of the Fair CreditReporting Act (15 USC 1681d). This law requires employers to obtainconsent from the subjects of background checks. If an adverse hiringdecision is made, the individual must be given a copy of the report.
At present, the federal law only pertains to employers who hire third partyinvestigators to conduct background checks. It does not apply if the employerconducts the background check itself. An increasing number of employersare doing their own investigations due to the availability of lowcostinformation broker data bases on the web. The law must be broadened toencompass employers who conduct their own searches. (The CaliforniaLegislature amended its background check law, effective 2002, to requireemployers who conduct their own investigations to abide by the samedisclosure requirements as third part investigators. See California CivilCode 1786.53.)The law must also close the "adverse decision" loophole. An employer mightclaim to have decided to not hire an individual because of a superior jobpool, not because of negative information found in the background check. Insuch cases, the applicant does not need to be given a copy of the report andmay never know that erroneous information, for example, may have been thereal cause of the rejection. Employees and job applicants must be given theopportunity to obtain copies of their background checks in all instances, notjust those where adverse decisions have been made. Of course, there mustbe an exception for investigations conducted when there is suspicion ofcriminal wrongdoing. To read more about the problem of background checksand wrongful criminal records, see my 2000 speech presented at theSEARCH conference, available on the PRC web site,www.privacyrights.org/ar/wcr.htm.
9. Requiring more accountability of the private investigator industry. Theprivate investigator profession, a major user of public records information,must be regulated in those states where there are no oversight agencies.Further, existing regulations must be tightened and made uniformnationwide, perhaps by federal law. Private investigators must be held tostrong standards regarding their access to and use of sensitive personalinformation. They should be held accountable when they misuse personalinformation.My concluding recommendations are more global in scope.
10. Teaching and practicing tolerance. This is my "tolerance"recommendation, and is perhaps in the realm of the "impossible dream."Even so, it must be considered by all of us. We must transform how oursociety judges individuals not an easy task. As I discussed earlier, weappear to be forgetting the older social value of "societal forgiveness." If weare becoming a dossier society, and I don't see signs suggesting otherwise,we must all strive for greater tolerance when "negative" information is foundin personal data compilations. After all, one person's "black mark" isanother's life lesson learned the hard way.How to accomplish such a societal transformation is hard to envision,especially at a time when we are increasingly a "geteven," litigious society.
For starters, schools and colleges must teach about tolerance andresponsible informationhandling practices in business and ethics classes.And employers must be willing to look beyond many of the socalled negativeitems found in background checks in their hiring decisions. I realize that thelatter is especially difficult for companies to do given the likelihood of facingnegligent hiring lawsuits if bad decisions are made.
11. The "go slow" approach. Finally, courts and government agencies musttake a "go slow" approach to posting public records on the Internet. Forexample, as discussed earlier, the full texts of court records should not beposted online until flexible and effective redaction technology is available,and until court systems have adopted rules that support sealing the mostsensitive information. Government agencies must examine the public policyobjectives they are attempting to accomplish by making records available onthe Internet the prime one being government accountability. If there areways to limit the amount of personal information provided online withoutundermining the public policy objectives of providing access, then suchapproaches should be considered.I began this presentation by listing several negative consequences toindividuals and to society when public records containing personallyidentifiable information are widely available on the Internet. I strongly believethat unless courts, government agencies and industry groups explore andadopt many of the recommendations presented here, there will be seriousharm to many individuals and to society.That is why the "go slow" approach is the best way to proceed at this time so that technologies, policies and societal institutions can be allowed toevolve at the appropriate rate to protect privacy while at the same time aspromoting the benefits of electronic access.
