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The Iowa legislature is chewing over the notion that open government records may be responsible for identity theft and should be restricted. The Identity Theft Prevention Study Committee met last month and developed a collection of recommendations, including redacting certain “personal information” — that fuzzy term has yet to be defined — in public records. One of the panelists, Dan Combs of The Coalition for Sensible Public Records Access , a consortium of commercial public records aggregators, argued that redaction of public records is ineffectual and misses the supposed objective of curtailing “identity theft”, another fuzzy term. The Coalition site has position papers and summaries on public records access, such as this one on the important uses of the Social Security number by businesses and government.

What other constructive uses of the SSN identifier would you add?

Now, head down to Arizona where the Phoenix City Attorney has advised the police department to restrict disclosure of police records on the handy claim that thieves are scouring public records for personal information. The police department will start redacting victim names, birth dates of suspects AND those who are convicted and sitting in jail, and the addresses where crimes are committed. The dictum is being unevenly enforced, different types of data being excised, or not at all. Phoenix may expand this scattered policy to include code enforcement records. Which state law is this suppose to comport with?

All disciplinary records of Arizona government employees become public records September 28, 2008. Arizona Revised Statutes adds section 39-128, Disciplinary records of public officers and employees; disclosure; exceptions.

Release of home address, telephone number and photograph of people in certain job categories (law enforcement) is restricted.

The Arizona Ombudsman produces a monthly educational newsletter, The Public Law. A recent issue offers agencies guidance that speaks to the complaints of private investigators, reporters, and all those who request public records. Read, Public Records Law 101: Avoid the top ten most common pitfalls.

Alaska, Hawaii, Nebraska and Iowa are among the few states that have a statewide ombudsman office.

Does your state have an open records law related to government employee discipline records?

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.

The Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania is formulating new policies regarding public access to court case files. The Notice from the court highlights the proposed removal of Social Security numbers and bank account numbers from future court files. The public can submit comments by email, which are due by May 28, 2008.

The New Jersey Supreme Court Committee on Public Access to Court Records recently solicited comments on its proposed policy changes. Read the submitted comments and the report on policy changes.

An Opinion issued by the North Dakota Attorney General confirms that email messages from government employees “acting within the scope of their public positions” are public records “regardless of whether it is located at their private homes or businesses.”

Last year, I wrote about a similar determination by the Idaho Supreme Court and the Arkansas Supreme Court. The courts, not the government entity, must determine whether public employees’ emails are private, according to the Arizona Supreme Court.

Read a recent round-up of other state court decisions: Are public employee e-mails secret?, The Des Moines Register, March 18, 2008.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press tracks public records news. Subscribe by email or RSS.

It will be easier to find Florida public records through a Google search without having to mine each government database, now that the Florida state government has a cooperative arrangement with Google to index their sites.

Search the name “Villalobos” within Florida government records by formulating this query:

villalobos site:state.fl.us

All of the initial results are for Senator Villalobos at the legislature’s Web site. If he’s not your target, search again, removing that site:

villalobos site:state.fl.us -site:leg.state.fl.us

One set of public records is various state license holders.

Examine the search results to uncover new types of public records. Scroll down to the link to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement document listing a “Villalobos” among those receiving an Intoxilyzer test. If you go to the public records section at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Alcohol Testing Program you’ll see a jumble of files that aren’t searchable here, but content within them can be plumbed at a search engine.

| View | Upload your own

This document image tells you that Villalobos’ arrest took place in Broward County, which is helpful because names in the Florida court case indices won’t come up in a search engine.

I previously wrote about the other state governments - Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia - whose sites Google is also indexing.

The Ohio Office of Homeland Security, which licenses security guards, is having trouble keeping an accurate count of licensees since a recent requirement went into effect that employers register each new security guard hire. [State system doesn’t allow exact accounting of security guards, CantonRep.com, May 29, 2007.]

The state estimates about 21,000 individuals holding security guard licenses but says that number could be inflated by as much as 3,000 since employees are registered each time they go to work for a new company, meaning some could be registered multiple times.

Meanwhile, changes in access to public records in Ohio may make it difficult for even law enforcement to do background checks. Recently passed legislation shields personal information in public records on some government employees and their family members.

The New York Drug Dealer Registry Act, recently introduced legislation, would require drug dealers with felony convictions to register upon release from prison.

The North Carolina Court of Appeal ruled against a newspaper that sought clemency appeal applications under the state public records law. [North Carolina Appeals Court Holds That Public Records Act Does Not Apply to Clemency Applications, Media Law Prof, June 7, 2007]

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court agrees with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that juror names are releasable under the state public records act. The newspaper was rebuffed in its request for juror addresses. [Names of criminal trial jurors are public, RCFP, June 5, 2007]

The Arizona Court of Appeal agreed with Phoenix Newspaper, Inc. that a claim for damages made against a school district is a public record, even in the case of a rape of a minor. [Ruling: Rape victim's compensation claim public record, Arizona Republic, June 12, 2007]

The California Supreme Court seems to be leaning toward the interpretation of state law granting the public access to the names and salaries of government employees, including police officers. A ruling is expected within 3 months. A favorable ruling for the newspapers that filed the lawsuits could help private investigators in police misconduct cases track the employment of officers across departments.

The Computer Services Bureau of the California Police Officers Standards and Training (POST) Commission maintains a database of peace officer records to track employment training.

California criminal defense attorneys and investigators, and crime reporters will want to consult the 2007 Legal Update, a 150 page guide to legislation, case law and Attorney General Opinions enacted in the past year related to law enforcement.

Idaho has received a grant to expand its victim notification service (VINE) beyond the state prison system to its county jails. The complete network should be operational by next year.

Photos for inmates at the Utah County, Utah jail are back online after being removed because someone downloaded a bunch of photos and posted them to another site. To their credit, the County Attorney and Sheriff emerged from their huddle with a wise decision: fix the technological problem and get the public records back online.

Jennifer LaFleur discusses some of the troubling legislation that passed and failed in Texas recently, including the closure of the concealed gun registrations database to public inspection.

The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the courts, not government entities determine which emails generated by agencies are public records. Calaveras County, California, seems to be taking a serious look at its electronic records storage policy. Check out the Federal Judicial Center “Links” page for electronic discovery resources.

The news that Google is assisting some states with indexing their online public records content has been repeated in the mainstream press, without shedding much light on the what or how. The Arizona Government Technology Agency does a better job, detailing the agency records that are included and the nature of the indexing.

To improve access to State information, Arizona technology managers have been working with Google to implement the Sitemap Protocol for online State databases. This protocol enables a website owner to communicate the contents of a web accessible database to commercial search engines so that information in the database can be indexed and searched by commercial search engines. Pilot Sitemaps have been implemented at the Arizona Governor’s Office, the Arizona Registrar of Contractors, AHCCCS, and the Departments of Administration, Health Services, Public Safety, and Real Estate.

Most public records indexes require the searcher to go to the government site and use that site’s search mechanism to find individual personal information records. But many of these will now be accessible through a general search engine, bringing part of the deep Web to the surface Web.

Here are three different query formulations that you can perform in Google of the Arizona Department of Real Estate licensee records, the first two of which return the same result - pointing to the Arizona government record. The third lists the same result in the 3rd Google entry.

The order of the first and last name has to correspond to that in the public record if you put the terms within quotations.

“STRADLING, REBECCA” arizona real estate license

“STRADLING, REBECCA” site:azre.gov

rebecca STRADLING “real estate”

The State of Arizona also has a Google custom search engine, where you can perform the same search, but only searching Arizona “State Agencies, Boards and Commissions, Legislative Government, Counties, Cities and Towns, and Tribes.” In this case, the same name search, without quotes, returns a manageable 10 records. If needed, you can then refine the results to the appearance of the terms in only legislative, state, county or city Web sites.

Private investigators may discover new research sources and approaches reading, Gathering Competitive Intelligence for Litigators and Business Lawyers (April 2007, Wisconsin Lawyer), Tony Chan’s roundup of online personal information databases and Web sites for the legal field. Much of the article is directed to attorneys, and those in Wisconsin, related to legal business development or fee-based data sources. But he also mentions a few of the free public records through which you can find people in the military, verify a professional license or disciplinary actions, and develop competitive intelligence. The article also footnotes a posting I did on the trends in restricting access to public records.

On the theme of redacting public records, Arizona legislation SB 1169 is still pending. This bill , would require the Maricopa County Recorder to remove Social Security numbers from documents on its Web site and the other counties would do the same at the request of an individual, starting in 2009. Reported in the Arizona Daily Star, AZ bill keeps SS numbers off Internet.

The privacy advocates are on the warpath to close access to online images of UCC filings, state by state. Last week the Arizona Secretary of State removed the Uniform Commercial Code filing documents from the Web site after a privacy fanatic apparently claimed that the site was a place that criminals trolled for Social Security numbers. Is there any proof for this?

Although new UCC financing statements in Massachusetts have the Social Security numbers removed from online documents there is pressure, which the Secretary of State has so far resisted, to take down the site completely.

This is an issue that has pitted the interests of consumer lobbyists against those who might otherwise be allies: the champions of open government. Public records that are accessible to all, free, and unaltered by the government are under threat by regulation, statute and public hysteria over a misplaced fear of identity theft. Surely there is a way we can keep these records available on the Internet for legitimate business and research purposes without aggravating the problem of identity theft. What do you think? Are public records a serious, documented contributor to identity fraud?

The abundance of state legislation restricting access to public records is depressing for open government advocates. But the head in the sand approach won’t preserve access, so here are some of the Bills under consideration by state legislatures.

New Hampshire

HB 269, An act prohibiting “pretexting” as a means of obtaining personally identifiable information, would invoke civil penalties for any use of pretexting to obtain any personally identifying information.

HB 686 would prohibit anyone from electronically tracking another person without that person’s consent.

HB 729 includes a prohibition on retaining or storing personal information on drivers’ licenses in an electronic form.

Arizona

Legislation introduced in Arizona aims to remove all victim information from police reports before they’re released to journalists, attorneys, private investigators or the public in general. SB 1286 states: “A victim’s contact and identifying information that is obtained, compiled or reported by a law enforcement agency shall be redacted by the originating agency in publicly accessible records pertaining to the criminal case involving the victim. “

SB1286 has other flaws as well. By requiring law enforcement to keep victim information out of public records (instead of redacting or blacking out the information when appropriate), the bill could force police agencies to spend millions of dollars to install new computer software and to redesign reports in order to create two sets of documents — one for public release and one for the criminal justice system to operate fairly.

California

California State Sen. Ron Calderon has introduced SB 690, legislation that was expected to allow District Attorneys to release personal information on arrestees and parolees, which an Attorney General Opinion had said violated the right to privacy. Unfortunately the bill appears to have become restrictive to the point that private investigators and the public might have more difficulty obtaining police reports under the California Public Records Act.

Notwithstanding any other law, a local agency may, in response to a written request made pursuant to Section 6253 of the Government Code, provide information from a local summary criminal history, if the person making the request declares under penalty of perjury that the request is made for a scholarly or journalistic purpose and the release of the information would enhance public safety, the interest of justices, or the public’s understanding of the justice system.

California Assemblymember Dave Jones has submitted AB 1168, a bill regulating public records which contain social security numbers.

The California Public Records Act requires state and local agencies to make their records available for public inspection unless a record is exempt from disclosure. The act exempts from disclosure, among others, any record that is a personnel, medical, or similar file the disclosure of which would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
This bill would provide that, notwithstanding these provisions, a local agency shall not disclose to the public any record that is required to be open to the public by any provision of law if that record displays more than the last four digits of any social security number.

SB 216 would allow only the last 4 digits of a judgment debtor’s social security number to appear on public records. SB 644 is similar.

A vague bill, AB 703 requires that records containing social security numbers be destroyed.

Last year’s failed bill, SB 1666, has returned in the form of SB 328, Personal Information: Prohibited Practices.

The bill would also prohibit any person, as defined, from, among other things, obtaining or attempting to obtain, or causing or attempting to cause the disclosure of, personal information about a customer or employee contained in the records of a business through specified methods, such as by making false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements or representations, with specified exceptions.

New Mexico

Two bills at the state legislature would make private records that are currently public. New Mexico publicly-owned utilities must provide copies of all its records, under current law, but the presumption of openness that has characterized the release of government records shifting toward closure.

One proposed law, HB 279, from Rep. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces, would prohibit the disclosure of consumers’ nonpublic personal information.

Another bill, House Bill 1027 from Rep. Patty Lundstrom, D-Gallup, would exempt from the right to inspect public records any law enforcement record of “individuals accused but not charged with a crime,” discharge papers of a veteran and “the residential addresses of customers of municipal or county utilities.”

Is your state government proposing similar legislation?

Madera County, California real property parcel maps can be searched by address and viewed online.

The Sacramento County, California probate court is adding online document images to its Web site. Only cases filed after February 5, 2007 are currently included.

The recent expansion of the role of Arizona Ombudsman-Citizens’ Aide Office will provide a complaint center for addressing public records access violations.

The Indiana Attorney General has an online, searchable database of the legal actions they have initiated against violators of Indiana’s consumer protection laws. Search by county and/or year or view a list by defendant’s name, with links to the public filings and court orders.

The Pasco County, Florida Sheriff has added many new online tools to its Web site: Active calls log, Dispatch log, Subdivision activity log, Inmates in jail, and Outstanding warrants.

It is little surprise that Governor Schwarzenegger signed SB 202, Privacy: telephone calling pattern record or list, making the acquisition of a telephone subscriber’s phone call records a crime.[Read more at Computerworld]

Any person who purchases, sells, offers to purchase or
sell, or conspires to purchase or sell any telephone calling pattern record or list, without the written consent of the subscriber, or any person who procures or obtains through fraud or deceit, or attempts to procure or obtain through fraud or deceit any telephone calling pattern record or list shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500), or by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by both a fine and imprisonment. If the person has previously been convicted of a violation of this section, he or she is punishable by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000), or by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by both a fine and imprisonment.

The prohibition applies to telephone numbers called by the subscriber, not reverse address or telephone information. The California Association of Licensed Investigators (CALI) supported the bill and urged the governor to sign it.

Other states have restricted access to telephone records, among them are Michigan, Maine, Oklahoma, Arizona, Washington and Florida. Other state legislation on telephone records is collected at the National Conference of State Legislatures Web site.

I’m reaching into the archives of postings I’ve done over the past 2 years, aggregating some of them by theme. All of these can be retrieved searching by keyword, using the “search” box in the upper right corner of the PI buzz page. Don’t put multiple word phrases in quotation marks.

Find airline flight landing and takeoff times in near real time. View the location of flights in progress, their speed and estimated arrival time, searching by departure and arrival points. You can also receive an email alert notifying you of departure and arrival time changes.

I explored location technology tracking and the evolving laws related to use of GPS in vehicles.

Arizona has a statewide Web database of stolen vehicles. The Michigan abandoned vehicles database is searchable by VIN or vehicle plate.

Public reaction to inmate data posted by a Texas county has lead the agency to remove it.

Less than three weeks after information about Tarrant County Jail inmates became available online, county officials agreed Tuesday to cut back on the project because of complaints that photographs and old arrest information should not be so easily accessible to the public.

By now you’re probably aware that there’s no such animal as a thorough court records check, even in an individual county. Why? Because there are hidden dockets that are not accessible to the public and are not recorded in the court index of cases. Also, some records are deemed confidential, not just juvenile matters but divorce and other civil cases.

Take a look at the Pima County, Arizona Confidential Sensitive Data Form. This is the document on which a filer enters all personal and financial information of case parties. It’s then sealed, like closed adoption records, only available by court order. If the filer neglects to put the personal information on the confidential form, the entire document can be sealed. And how likely is it that a judge will expose the file to your light of day? An Arizona attorney discovered that a 1997 divorce file had been sealed. No reason was given. The judge who reveiwed the file in response to the attorney’s request to have it opened, denied access, according to the Tucson Citizen.

Judge John Davis ruled in Pima County Superior Court that, “It is presumed that court records should be open and available to the public.”

But Davis, after inspecting the file, did not order the divorce case opened. He wrote that Kirschner already had obtained the information he needed and there was nothing else of use to him in the file.

“Little or no impact on the public or the public’s broader constitutional rights is involved,” Davis wrote.

Pennsylvania district judges were upbraided by the administrator for the state courts for redacting court files without any legal authority.

The North Dakota Attorney General ruled against a county Sheriff for rejecting a public records request without citing any legal authority. The AG also noted that the Sheriff obstructed the requester’s objective by not pointing out that the records existed in a form other than the one identified in the record request.

An online database of stolen vehicles in Arizona can be searched by license plate number or VIN. The site is operated by the Arizona Attorney General.

The Arizona Senate has approved legislation that will add code enforement officers to the list of government employees whose names can be removed from the public records. The summary of HB 2220 lists the covered classifications.

Authorizes code enforcement officers to submit an affidavit to the county recorder, county assessor, county treasurer and the Motor Vehicle Division requesting the restriction of public access to personal identifying information.

The Arizona Republic article notes that there has not been unanimous support, that the House initially defeated the bill. Sen. Chuck Gray opposed the legislation as a move toward creating “a secret government.”

House Bill 2220 was previously approved by the House but now returns to that chamber for consideration of changes made by the Senate. The Senate initially voted 15-14 against the bill on May 1.

… offices will restrict access to records with enforcement officers’ home addresses, telephone numbers and photographs.

Arizona Governor Napolitano signed HB 2785, Telephone Records, Unauthorized Sale Prohibited, into law this week. The Arizona law defines civil sanctions and classifies unauthorized access of telephone account information as a misdemeanor. As in other states, Arizona expands law enforcement authority in this area to allow access in the course of “official duties.”

The Arizona papers don’t appear to have given the story much ink.

The Navajo Nation has approved a measure that will require those convicted of sex related offenses who work or live on Navajo land to register with the Chief of Police. Read the AP story

Legislation No. 0875-05: An Act Relating to Public Safety, and
Judiciary; Enacting the Sex Offenders Registration Act of 2005;
Amending Title Seventeen of the Navajo Nation Code.

The Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff’s Department has unveiled an online database of outstanding arrest warrants that is searchable by partial name. The search results return address, date of birth and original offense.

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