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I’ve never understood why things like this have to be a part of public record. Traffic accidents, traffic citations, bankruptcies, buying a house, and even getting divorced.
All of those are very personal things that should never be a part of public record. And even if they are, the PII should not.
Simple improvement: Add a fee to access the personally identifiable information. And make the record of accessing the information public.
Not perfect, but better.
I believe some things (like DMV records) are fee based. But the fee is nominal and wouldn’t stop any predator from doing bad things if they are so inclined. The only thing adding fees does is to financially incentivize keeping the data online and accessible to anybody who pays.
But the fee is nominal and wouldn’t stop any predator from doing bad things if they are so inclined.
It might slow down people from doing it in bulk, though.
That wouldn't fix anything. There would be a site reselling it for a lower price or a large subscription fee for a specific area.
Almost anything made by governments is public domain so it's legal.
Tell that to my town clerk, charging $20 to take pictures of documents with your own phone. This is based on Sec. 1-212 part g (the bottom) of state law And, as a local history researcher, it bites ass.
It's still public domain.
Accurate. I both misread your comment and I have a bee in my bonnet about a $20 fee to take pictures of something you can examine for free.
They do that because they can. Write a letter to your mayor or executive of whatever municipality that is.
Technically, it's not been my municipality that's charged me, but those around me and where I work. I don't vote there. My town didn't exist when the people I'm researching were making records. And at the state level, it comes up every few years but dies in committee. Last time was in 2020, when it died due to the pandemic changes everyone's focus. I'll ping my local congresscritter and see if it can be revived--the person advocating for change recently retired, sadly.
:(
Each one of these events is easily shown to have good merits for being public record. Even ignoring the obvious case of "we want to track what the police/courts were actually doing".
Traffic accidents
Occurs in front of your property and cause some amount of damage to your stuff that officers didn't outline in any reports. You want to be able to figure out who did it so you can send them the bill/sue them. Hiding these records doesn't make sense. Other obvious uses would be to find out where someone went/is missing, eg if someone died.
traffic citations
You're attempting to hire someone for a job, part of that job is some amount of driving. Being able to lookup if they have any record of driving poorly would be due diligence you'd expect a company to do. Hell getting into an Uber or Lyft... You might want to lookup your driver. You could be surprised.
bankruptcies
Hire someone to do something related to finances in your company? Or to file your taxes? Might want to actually double check they're not idiots on their own dime either. Someone asks you for a loan, or any other financial related stuff. Records of them defaulting are important.
buying a house
Your dog ran up to me and bit me, then ran away. Being able to get the property details can be highly important.
getting divorced
Can trigger a number of things. If divorce has any kid related issues... and one parent no longer has rights to the child... Schools/doctors can validate that one parent no longer has those rights without just blindly trusting random documents one parent provides.
You make mostly good points — I still disagree, but I can at least see your side.
The divorce and kids thing though is not what you think it is. Divorce and child custody agreements are two separate legal things and child custody agreements are thankfully not a matter of public record.
Divorce and child custody agreements are two separate legal things and child custody agreements are thankfully not a matter of public record.
And yet I was able to pull my parents Divorce from decades ago and in those documents were details about who has rights to me... I think this is likely a state by state thing. Though my name was never directly mentioned.
Say that under any thread about any billionaire and watch your comment get double digit downvotes
I don’t like the existence of billionaires anymore than the next reasonably-sane pleb does. But someone’s financial/social status should never be a consideration to their constitutional right of privacy. You’ll just have to find some other way to harangue them for their behavior.
Bankruptcy should 100% be a public record.
Why? To publicly humiliate a person? Not everyone is evil; people fall on hard times. It happens. A lot. Why should they be further harassed by predatory practices of being offered loans after they’ve hit the rock bottom of their financial world? Because the first thing that happened when I filed for bankruptcy was to be offered a mortgage loan.
Because you're asking a court to let you not pay back a bunch of money you borrowed. Is that not reason enough? I'm not sure what you taking out another loan during bankruptcy has to do with that.