Town registrars in Massachusetts publish an annual “street list” of local resident names, dates of birth, occupations, veteran status and nationality, which has been a public record. A state Senate bill would change that status, from one of a public record, to one that is only available for federal, state and local governmental use. [Story: Public listings could go private, Matt Murphy, Eagle Boston Bureau]

The common practice of treating search warrants as public records comports with the law, according to an Opinion issued by the Illinois Attorney General. Once the warrants have been returned to the court they are part of the court record and must be available for public inspection.The Sangamon County State’s Attorney backed the Circuit Clerk, who was apparently one of the few court clerks denying the public access to the executed search warrants. As one of this story’s commentators noted, “at some point they have to be made public because it is the public’s dollars which finance them. Making it clear that every search warrant will eventually become public keeps those issuing them honest. We do want judges issuing them and police seeking them kept honest don’t we?”

A Washington State school district narrowly won support from the state Supreme Court in a decision that pitted the Public Records Act against attorney-client privilege for government agencies. Perhaps most damaging to open government, noted in the Justices’ dissent, is the aspect of the ruling allows agencies to seek a judicial determination as to whether a requested public record must be disclosed.

This is the only site I’ve seen that aggregates the indexes of Recorder documents of multiple counties. The Oklahoma County Clerk Public Records is a project of the Oklahoma county clerks in conjunction with Kellpro, which develops software applications for Oklahoma and Texas county and state agencies. Search across all 28 Oklahoma counties that are currently in this database by name. Registration is free but required to get online access to document images.

The Missouri Attorney General has unveiled a database of filed consumer complaints that can be searched by company name or partial name.The database includes more than 100,000 complaints filed since January 1, 2004. View the complaint number, type of complaint, the number of complaints and the date filed. The site does not provide any information on whether the complaint was pursued by the Attorney General or what the result of any investigation might have been.

The Tennessee Sexual Offender Registry has been expanded to include mapping and photographs of all offenders, and more offenders than were previously on the Web site. Registry of sex offenders expanding, Chattanooga Times Free Press, July 27, 2007.

In advance of any state law, the Rockland County, New York Clerk has installed software that will remove Social Security numbers from the online version of recorded documents. According to this article, New York state tax liens now use a different number than the Social Security number on documents.

A bill signed by the governor of North Carolina will marginally facilitate the reconnection of birth parents and the children they relinquished for adoption. If both parties agree, the adoption placement services will act as confidential intermediaries, providing the birth parents and adult children with each other’s contact information.

Courthouse Direct has added a free bankruptcy index search to its collection of free public records, which now include nationwide (sort of) real property, many Recorder indexes, and Texas marriage, divorce and death indexes.

Search the bankruptcy records by name, date, filing state, type of filing, city, state or the the last 4 digits in the Social Security number. The asterisk wildcard can be used after a partial first name. The results list returns the court location, full name of the party, the date of the filing and the filing type. The filing type is not very useful because it describes the subject (defendant 1 or 2 or “other”), not the nature of the court filing. Further details are available for a fee, or you can go to PACER, which is less costly. The through dates are not specified, except that the party search is complete starting in 2001. I found California cases in one jurisdiction from 1985. Other states had filings from the early 1990’s but most seemed to be from the 2000’s. Courthouse Direct bankruptcy data comes from the commercial service AACER, which does not have a free lookup.

One caution: The bankruptcy search only works in Internet Explorer!

Visit this federal government site for a glossary of bankruptcy terms.

The Iowa County Recorders Association operates a unique statewide database of Recorded documents. Real property and all other documents filed with the Recorder offices in Iowa counties can be searched from one portal. Select the county and documents you want to retrieve and then search by last or first name. Perform a single search for many or all 99 counties, and search for multiple document types; obtain index details and document images. Free registration is required. Full access requires Internet Explorer browser. The site also has links to individual county Web pages.

The State of Iowa Web site is well organized and has an extensive collection of links to state agencies, searchable by agency name and type of information. An array of Iowa state government documents are available online and can be located through the site’s search engine. Review the list of online services to link to databases of campaign finance reports, court records, corporations, unclaimed property, unidentified persons, state highway accident reports and much more.

Bookmark this link to a list of all agencies for each county. There’s quite a variance in the extensiveness of the online information that each county provides. The Cerro Gordo County Web site is technologically current, providing RSS for Public Notices (with documents) and News. Be sure to check each county Web site regularly for additions to their online records.

City guides, city government sites and Iowa services can be accessed from this commercial directory.

The Iowa Freedom of Information Council has an Open Records Handbook and other resources related to the public records law and access.

The Iowa State University has state and local government links to directories sorted by topic.

Some Web sites are valuable to private investigators for purposes other than their intended use. Craigslist is one of those, sometimes revealing background and activity on your subject. Small town newspapers often carry obituaries, police blotters and public notices not otherwise easily accessible.

Do any of you Iowans have favorite personal information Web sites?

You may have noticed that there’s a trend toward eliminating personal identifiers - social security numbers, dates of birth and addresses - from all public records. Any publicly filed documents containing social security numbers are subject to being altered, removing the SSN identifier, or rejected until the personal information is redacted. Currently, financial records, tax liens, deeds and mortgage loan documents are being changed to the extent that it will become impossible to verify whether a federal, state or municipal tax lien belongs to a particular individual.

Fraud investigators, people finders, heir locators, financial lenders and journalists checking on the fitness of our politicians all rely on the unique identifier to develop background and verify identity.

The complete social security number is being removed from filed documents, not just from the Internet indexes and images. And guess what? The commercial databases aren’t going to be able to provide search results that cross reference SSNs on tax liens or judgments filed with county recorder’s offices with a name or address. The indexes of the data resellers are only as good as the original records.

The Missouri Secretary of State just announced that she’s removed the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) document images from the Web site.

The Secretary of State’s Office is taking every step possible to protect personal identification information (Social Security Numbers and Federal Identification Numbers) while continuing to provide service to our customers. As part of that effort, our office has temporarily removed Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) images from the web site as they may inadvertently contain personal identification information.

Although the Virginia legislature has yet to enact a pending bill that would remove SSNs from land records and court filings, Nevada county recorders are rejecting filings that contain social security numbers. This new requirement has created a mess in the courts because the County Clerk is required to submit affirmations that the “5,000 documents filed every day in District Court” have the social security numbers removed. Even in the relatively lower volume state of Vermont the county clerks are overwhelmed by the mandate to extract SSNs from previously submitted documents. The Kansas legislature apparently didn’t consider the costly (both personal and financial, to government and business) consequences of redacting data, declaring that

Unless required by federal law, no document available for public inspection or copying shall contain an individual’s social security number if such document contains such individual’s personal information.

Personal information is name, address, phone number or e-mail address. This applies to

documents recorded in the official records of any recorder of deeds of the county or to any documents filed in the official records of the court and shall be included, but not limited to, such documents of any records that when filed constitutes:
(1) A consensual or nonconsensual lien;

(2) an eviction record;
(3) a judgment;
(4) a conviction or arrest;
(5) a bankruptcy;
(6) a secretary of state filing; or
(7) a professional license.

Humm, no name on a professional license…

All of the 50 state governments will eventually succumb to this “identity theft” protection measure on court records, UCC filings and mortgage loan documents.

Why don’t these state legislatures follow the federal model, masking only part of the SSN, which achieves the aims of fraud prevention while keeping the unique association of the number with a name?

Search by personal or business name across all Utah government indexes of historical documents that are online. The Utah death index with death certificate images is available from 1905 to 1954.

The San Joaquin Recorder now has its index online.

The Spokane County, Washington Sheriff’s Office has added a roster of current inmates to its Website. Search by name to get inmate details.

The Wyoming connection to Vinelink is expanding and eventually will cover all counties, parole boards and the state Department of Corrections. Cheyenne is expected to be online within 6 months.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal prosecutors can withhold witness names.

Prosecutors gave defense attorneys parts of the reports, but withheld sections that could reveal the names of witnesses. They argued the reports were covered by a federal court rule protecting the work of “government agents” and that revealing the names could endanger witnesses who are project residents.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the report sections could be withheld because the police qualified as government agents, even though they weren’t federal employees.

A private law firm representing a town in North Carolina must still comply with the open records laws, according to a state appeals court.

Access the California San Joaquin County Recorder index for filings since 1968 at the official Web site. Details are provided but document images are not.

Searching a nationwide database of court judgments and tax liens may not return all the filed records, even recent ones. You must search the county Recorder official records to do a comprehensive search.

Many County Recorders’ indices are available at their official Web site. Real property documents are found here, but there are also financial records, including court judgments and, state and federal tax liens, which can often be accessed remotely, that may not be found anywhere else. [More on this in a moment.]

Earlier I wrote about a company that has free access to a database of current real property ownership.This site also has a fee service providing instantaneous remote access to images of recorded documents, a service not usually available at a county Internet site.

Netronline has a few free features –one is a county lookup by zipcode or city–and a fee service for aerial maps by address.

Regional proprietary databases may have an online index, which may not available at the county site. TitleX has searchable indices for Texas, but this is a fee only site.

Okay, here’s the gaping hole in the widely available nationwide bankruptcy, judgments and lien searches.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lake County, California Recorder index is searchable at the county Web site. A search by name or date range returns filing parties, date of filing and document number. No document images are available. The database appears to cover records from 1974 to the present.