The Empire Center for New York State Policy has begun to build databases to make New York government more transparent. Just today, the Center’s project, SeeThruNY unveiled a database of names and salaries for more than 263,000 employees of New York’s state government. Search their other databases of New York government contracts and expenditures.

Is it a tool, or will you be fooled? That all depends on how familiar you are with searching criminal records. Read my review of this criminal records search guide if you’d like to learn more about how criminal records are maintained. The free people finder sites offer more details for a fee, but this is much more pricey than professional databases, usually returning less current records and ones that are more geographically restricted.

The free criminal records lookup site, CriminalSearches.com, is operated by the California company, Confi-chek, a commercial provider of consumer public records. You’ve probably made use of the free portion of their PeopleFinders.com site to verify alternative names, identify associates or obtain an approximate age.

The criminal records at CriminalSearches are likely a portion of the state, and California county records that Peoplefinders.com has on its site’s fee-based criminal records search. These records come from each states’ Department of Corrections, Administrative Office of the Courts and Department of Public Safety (Minnesota, Oklahoma and Texas). The most number of records come from the states’ Department of Corrections because this is a statewide agency in every state. These are felony convictions only of offenders who have been in the custody of the DOC. Some state records include county court criminal filings, helpful for finding criminal records that didn’t result in a conviction, a prison sentence or were in a state that doesn’t have a statewide criminal index. California, for one.

The site is still in test mode so the same search could produce different results, but then you knew this wasn’t a comprehensive criminal records database, right?

Use the “Advanced Search” to add city, data of birth and nature of offense parameters. I did a name search, selected “sexual offenses”, assuming results would come only from the sex offender database, but found this record of a dismissed sexual offense - which would not be reportable to a registered sexual offender database. If you want to find records with the first name “Jeff” or “Jeffrey” put an asterisk after “Jeff” (Jeff*) and the search will return both. This doesn’t work with the last name field.

Also, receive a monthly email of criminal records changes on as many as 5 names.

Do you have any cautionary tales for using this site, or do you recommend it?

The Massachusetts Supreme Court is proposing new procedures that, if adopted, would curtail the available personal information in all court files. The court is accepting public comments on its Interim Guidelines for the Protection of Personal Identifying Data in Publicly Accessible Court Documents.

The document proposes redaction of particular personally identifying information in court filings.

Except as provided in these guidelines, a document filed with a court should not include a complete version of any of the following personal identifying data elements. Instead, the filer should redact information from any pre-existing document, or omit information from any document prepared for filing, so that the document includes:
(1) in the case of a social security number, taxpayer identification number, credit card or other financial account number, driver’s license number, or passport number, only the last four digits;
(2) in the case of a birth date, only the year of birth, rather than the exact day or month; and
(3) in the case of a name identified as the mother’s maiden name of a person, only the first initial of that name.

The Pennsylvania Treasury Department has launched a database of state government agency goods and services contracts. Search by any combination of contractor, contracting agency, contract amount or date range. This primarily includes contracts entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2008. See the FAQ’s for database parameters.

The University of New Mexico is revising its policies on access to public records and disclosure of personal information. One of the additions to the list of public record information on University employees is job application, resume or curriculum vitae. The policy changes will be voted on at the August 2008 UNM Board of Regents meeting.

Anthony Pellicano may have supplanted Sam Spade as the most widely recognized private investigator, albeit Sam was fictional, although Pellicano seems so. The National Law Journal hyperbolic headline, Christensen Case a ‘Wake-Up’ Call for Lawyers on Use of Private Eyes, suggests that the Pellicano/Christensen matter is stirring an otherwise somnolent crowd, causing attorneys to be more attentive to their relationship with investigators (perhaps more so due to the criminal charge against one of their own). But, really people, other private investigators are not conducting illegal wiretaps or audio recordings, making threats to opposing parties in litigation or conspiring with their attorneys to do any of the above. This is truly an anomaly.

Still, attorneys and investigators in many cases don’t clarify the investigative approaches that may be employed. This could be essential as a matter of law, regulation, ethics or just good sense for the case at hand. For example, an attorney may ask her investigator to locate assets on an opposing party. Is the other party a judgment debtor or is the request a pre-litigation check? Does it matter?

One attorney in the story says, referring to the Pellicano/Christensen (and Hewlett Packard case) prosecution, that it has “woken up some lawyers as to what their liability, criminal or civil, may be with regard to private investigators they’ve hired.” And another: “you can’t just let your investigator go out there and investigate and take the fruits of what he provides and use it”. Those are sound conclusions.

Assume we all agree that wiretapping and conspiring to commit felonies is a very bad notion. What does Christensen Case a ‘Wake-Up’ Call suggest attorneys and their investigators should talk about to be sure that the investigator doesn’t just “go out there “? Well…nothing! There were no specifics included in the story. Here are a few of my own:

* What can, should or shouldn’t be stated to witnesses about the case?
* Are there involved parties who shouldn’t be contacted?
* Which information gathering methods mustn’t be used? Name them.
* Are there categories of records that the investigator should not obtain?

Have you talked with your attorney or investigator on ethical investigative methods?

Juror names and jury questionnaires are public records and subject to disclosure even if a trial judge has made promises to the contrary. At least in North Dakota. A ruling by that state’s Supreme Court, cited by the Associated Press, rebuffed a trial court’s claim that the records in one case were sealed out of fear that the jurors could be harassed.

“We conclude those reasons, by themselves, are insufficient to rebut the presumption of openness and to warrant a blanket closure in this case…”

Court rulings may seem like a bouncing ball when it comes to privacy, public records and electronic messaging. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has asserted that companies do not have an automatic right to access employees’ text messages if the data is stored on outside servers. Read more about this decision and the significance for privacy and data management. Some other news stories on email access and public records can be found at WikiFOIA.

Maybe it’s a trend in the refinement of the sex offender databases and regulation of where registered sex offenders can live.Tennessee has joined Indiana (see this court ruling on the Indiana law), Missouri, Kentucky and Alaska requiring registered sex offenders submit their email addresses, which are being added to those state online databases. States can’t keep track of the physical location of registrants so the email address disclosure may not be of much value to public safety.

I don’t regularly check the currency of the links in prior postings, but you may have realized that many links on the Internet are good one day and dead the next. One way to find the new page is to backspace to the URL, deleting the subdirectories. Click on this link to see what I mean by an error message. If you backspace to just http://www.indystar.com, you’ll get to the site’s home page. Once you get to the home page search for a tab or drop-down menu related to the content. At the IndyStar site I was looking for the database of live police calls, which in the tabs at the top of the page is “Data Central”, under the “News” tab, and in the body of the Home page is linked to from “More databases.” Confusing, eh?

Visually scan the home page for an icon related to the topic of the former page. Newspaper public records and Sheriff departments “Most Wanted” and “Current Inmates” databases are often only displayed with a button link. The link to the sitemap, a visual representation or topical list of the pages at that Web site is usually found at the top or very bottom of the page, if it’s there at all. As a last resort, use the site’s search engine engine. Usually you’ll do better with a decently formulated search query at Google or Yahoo!. The link to the IndyStar Data Central calls for service to police and fire was the second result in this fairly lame search construction. Often this is good enough to quickly get you to your destination.

How do you find the corrected link after getting an error message page?

Search the Motorcycle Accident Reports Database by state and county for all 50 states, covering 2002-2006. The Gannett News Service pooled government and proprietary data to create the reports.The accident reports don’t identify the parties to the accident, but they list the date and time, place, nature of the accident, whether it was a fatality, the type of motorcycle involved and the hometown of the motorcycle driver. This is an example of a full profile.

How could this database be helpful to you in your investigations or research?

Government agencies in California can’t assign control of records that would otherwise be public records to a private entity. SB 1696 enrolled. New Law Allows Greater Access to Government Contracts, PolitickerCA.com, Adam Keigwin.

A Pennsylvania open records blog reports that the recent overhaul of the Pennsylvania Right To Know Law includes a requirement that records held by private companies doing business with the government may be a public record.

Emails on the private home computers of government appointees serving on a foundation benefiting public schools are public records, according to an opinion by the North Dakota Attorney General.

I recently discovered that police records in Arizona, even in open investigations, are public records. Public Records Free Directory blog reports that new legislation requires government employee disciplinary records be disclosed, with a provision that police officer’s home addresses are protected.