Archive for the ‘Public Records’ Category

Wouldn’t it be convenient and a boon to cross-border investigations to be able to search an online index of Mexico court records? An Internet search for a source for these directs you to Westlaw, a collection of legal research and fact-finding databases, costly and beyond the financial reach of most investigators. Searchsystems.net now includes Mexico civil and criminal index filings from Mexican federal and state courts in its collection of premium (fee-based) databases. Anyone can access the service, but Searchsystems subscribers get a discount. A free name search will return the number of records found in the index, but no other details. Once you enter the subject’s name and pay the fee you’ll be able to view all matching records. The detailed results provide party names, jurisdiction, date, court, docket number and, in criminal filings, the charges. A limitation of the Mexico criminal record indexes, unlike most US ones, is that they don’t contain a defendant’s date of birth. Here’s a image from a search result, or view a sample report at Searchsystems.

Do you know of any other Mexico civil or criminal index databases online?

[2011 Update: This database is no longer at Search Systems because the vendor isn't making it available.]

In Connecticut, a civil union license is issued by the registrar of vital statistics for the town in which the ceremony takes place or where the partners live, and recorded with the town clerk. Some town clerks have begun adding records of civil unions to their online index search, along with marriage, deaths, land records and trade names. The City of Danbury and the Town of Rocky Hill have civil unions recorded from 2005 to 2009.

Last year, I wrote about gathering information on domestic partnerships. Washington State has a domestic partnership registry online.

Do you know of any other online civil union or domestic partner registries?

The shuttering of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer print version during Sunshine Week is a sad reminder of the trend in big city papers. Increasingly, they can’t afford to operate in paper form, and maybe won’t be able to in online-only versions — depending on how the dollars shake out. It’s distressing to imagine the fate of democratic institutions without investigative journalists digging into the operations of government and making their findings broadly known. Support government transparency projects in your neighborhood.

More Sunshine Week state newspaper reports of local government on the web.

Illinois: Public’s access to local data varies

Indiana: Indiana ranks next to last in online records

Maryland: Make transparency permanent Maryland government policy

New York: Sunshine Week: N.Y. seeks cohesion for Web sites

North Carolina: Are records really public?

Ohio: Ohio sunshine law updates online highlights release of the Attorney General’s, Ohio Sunshine Laws, Open Government Resource Manual 2009

Pennsylvania: Civil records free to download in Pennsylvania county

Wisconsin: Shedding light on government activity

California lags, but Texas shines at the top of the rating of online access to government records — essential to a democratic system of governance and a core tool of the private investigator. Sunshine Week 2009 launched today with the publication of the survey ranking state governments’ online public records. The effort was developed and organized by Sunshine Week, the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Freedom of Information Committee, the National Freedom of Information Coalition, and the Society of Professional Journalists’ FOI Committee. The volunteer surveyors found that most states are digitizing some records and linking to sites with additional records, but they are often hard to find. In general, states have a smattering of public records online and have not made an extensive effort toward transparency.

More state newspaper reports of local government on the web.

California: California’s middling online record performance

Colorado: Many key records available online, free in Colo.

Illinois: How Illinois fared in Sunshine Week survey

Iowa: Some Iowa counties still chasing the Web

Louisiana: SUNSHINE WEEK: Watchdog groups criticize Jindal administration’s lack of transparency

Minnesota: Survey: 65 percent of Minn. gov’t records online

Nevada: Sunshine Week: A call to keep flow of public information free

Tennessee: Tennessee not putting some public records online

Texas: It’s not the government’s information; it’s your information

Washington: Some, but not all Wash. government records online

The newspapers are getting a running start on Sunshine Week –the Sunday kickoff to a week focused on efforts by the media and government to cast a light on government operations– reporting the good and the bad on the state of accessibility to online public agency records. The Sunshine Week 2009 Survey of State Government Information (conducted by news organizations) will be released Sunday and I’ll have a link here with highlights. [UPDATE: Link to Sunshine Week 2009 Survey of State Government Information Online]

Here’s the advance reporting.

Federal government:
FBI finds nothing for 2 out of 3 who seek records

Government secrecy concerns many in poll

Arkansas: Some State Records Not Given Time In The Sun

Colorado: Freedom of Information Superhighway

Connecticut: List of documents available online in Conn.

Illinois: New Ill. governor promises government openness

Kentucky: Survey shows some Ky. records available online

Massachusetts: Sunshine Week: Massachusetts lags behind on records

Mississippi: Mississippi last in survey of Internet records

North Carolina: NC gets high marks for posting public info online

Oklahoma: Across nation, public agencies in a time warp

Wisconsin: Survey: Growing number of Wis. records online

Surprisingly, I wrote about crime mapping only once in 2008. That was about the efforts to track and map crime incidents at universities and included some tips for finding online crime map sites. CrimeReports, which I wrote about in 2007, is still chugging along, now with about 150 participating police departments just in California, where they have the most extensive representation.

Fewer agencies have data at CrimeMapping. Some of these agencies also display crime incidents on a map at their law enforcement site, which may be in a different format. An older program called CrimeViewCommunity has a site with a URL that points to CrimeMapping.com. But you may find a few additional law enforcement agencies using CrimeViewCommunity at their site whose crime incidents aren’t included in other crime mapping programs. For example, the Detroit Police Department uses CrimeViewCommunity but the map is hosted only at their site. Use the inurl modifier to find agencies with crime maps. You’ll notice that there is only a 30-90 day retention of incidents.