Archive for the ‘Alaska’ Category

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.

Alaska is purported to have instituted one of the strongest identity theft protection laws through HB 25.

Although the bill sets out restrictions on the collection, sale and distribution to third parties of Social Security numbers, the exceptions should cover the normal course of business for private investigators.

A transfer of an individual’s social security number for the sole purpose of identifying a person about whom a report or database check is ordered, received, or provided is not a sale, lease, loan, trade, or rental of a social security number under this section.

Providing your clients an individual’s social security number is permitted if the purpose is regulated by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Modernization Act or by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Disclosure is permissible if it’s “for a background check on the individual, identity verification, fraud prevention, medical treatment, law enforcement or other government purposes, or the individual’s employment, including employment benefits.”

Also, the police department may create a database of identity theft victims. If it does, it “shall provide a victim or the victim’s authorized representative access to a data base established under this section to establish that the individual has been a victim of identity theft. Access to the a data base established under this section is limited to criminal justice agencies, victims of identity theft, and individuals and agencies authorized by the victims.”

The Department of Education Web sites for Alaska, Indiana, Louisiana, Nebraska, New York, Tennessee and West Virginia are a few that have a searchable database of certified public school teachers. These databases can mostly be searched by partial name, a convenient tool to obtain a teacher’s full name, verify her certification or how long she’s been teaching. States that don’t have educator certifications online – such as Mississippi – but whose teachers are nationally certified are in the database of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Search by state, city, district or name.

If you want to identify states that have online teacher certification records go to the specific state Department of Education Web site. Not everything can be found in a search engine! As an additional measure, you can formulate a Google query. One way you might look for the Massachusetts teacher licensing:

Massachusetts “teacher certification ” “department of education” -site:.com

Some states may refer to this as an “educator certification”.

South Carolina requires the last 5 digits of the teacher’s Social Security number to verify a credential – making the site unusable for the general public. California teacher lookup is at the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing site, which won’t come up if you’re using the phrase “teacher certification”.

The California Department of Labor Standards Enforcement has 5 different personal information databases, including a studio teachers certification database. Search other State Labor Department Web sites.

I previously wrote about some school finder resources and other state educator certification lookups.