Private Investigator Public Records Internet Search Privacy Reporting – PI Buzz

The governor of Alabama signed an executive order that creates an online database of all state government spending and legislators’ relationships with lobbyists. This will go online later this year, but many other states have already made available government spending, salary and revenue databases, often in a site dedicated to issues of transparency in government.

Review the Nevada state budget by general revenue, expenditures, departments or function at Nevada Open Government. Also, lookup vendors with state contracts.

Open Georgia includes a searchable database of state employees and their salaries.

South Carolina gathers together links to their various online databases including, state expenditures and salaries.

Similar sites have been assembled by Kentucky, Rhode Island (also see, Transparency Train) and South Dakota.

Transparency rankings and states with spending online are listed at Sunshine Review.

Track transparency in government spending issues reported by independent organizations in Colorado and Illinois.

Legislation, citizen activism and current news on state government transparency can be found at the Center for Fiscal Accountability.

The Texas Attorney General is employing various media – screen shots, video, press releases and court documents – to broadcast its recent shuttering of USA Skiptrace, AMS Research Services, Inc. and Worldwide Investigations, Inc. for selling consumers’ private telephone records and impersonating those account holders. These businesses were based in Colorado but conducted business in Texas when they called Texas telecommunications companies.

The Office of the Attorney General charged USA Skiptrace with violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The corporate defendants were ordered to pay $150,000 in civil penalties, with John Strange also responsible for a separate fine of $2,500.

Do you think that the telephone companies might someday send customers automatic email alerts notifying them of inquires?

Verify a current notary registration by partial last name at the Colorado Secretary of State site. Returns full name, city, zip code and, start and end dates of the notary commission. It does not include expired registrations.

Find other statewide databases of notary commissions at this SearchSystems link.

The Colorado Board of Medical Examiners is expanding the range of information on doctors at its site. This data on new licensees is expected to be posted April 2008, but will only be gathered and posted for current licensees in 2009.

The following information will be disclosed:

* Name
* Aliases
* Current Address
* Telephone number
* Information regarding all medical licenses ever held
* Current Board Certifications
* Practice Specialty (ies)
* Affiliations with hospitals and health care facilities
* Current ownership interests in businesses
* Current employment contracts
* Public disciplinary actions against a medical license
* Agreements and Stipulations to temporarily cease medical practice
* Involuntary hospital or health care facility privileging actions
* Involuntary surrender of a DEA registration
* Criminal convictions or plea arrangements for felonies and crimes of moral turpitude
* Judgments, settlements and arbitration awards for medical malpractice claims
* Refusal by an insurance carrier to issue medical liability insurance

The Nevada Supreme Court has adopted rules for redacting and sealing court records. The court may order a file sealed or redacted for “identified compelling privacy or safety interests that outweigh the public interest in access to the court record.” The identity of the person who filed the motion to seal the court record must be recorded and kept a public record.

The Vermont Health Department is beginning the process of removing Social Security numbers from death certificates. In addition, proposed legislation would remove the cause of death from death certificates. Another bill would bar the posting of court cases on the Internet. Read all about it.

If all goes according to current plans, by January 2008 Cook County, Illinois will become one of the first counties in the country to digitize vital records and make them available online. The birth, death and marriage records to be made available are not for recent events. The genealogical records include birth certificates that are at least 75 years old, marriage certificates more than 50 years old, and death certificates more than 20 years old.

A recommendation by the Nevada Supreme Court Commission on Preservation, Access and Sealing of Court Records would tighten the regulations on sealing court records. The current standard allows judges to seal records upon request. The commission policy would require a compelling reason for sealing court records and would authorize any member of the public to request a sealed record be opened. Reported in the Las Vegas Sun

Judges in Oklahoma counties are holding closed proceedings of special drug and mental health courts, even though they are not required to be closed. Judges are citing federal law which mandates health records be kept confidential.

The Colorado Supreme Court has instituted a new rule that delays the fulfillment of court record requests for up to 3 days, ostensibly to redact personal information such as Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, bank account numbers and other personal-identification numbers, such as those on passports or student IDs. This is another instance of the current trend in government to give supremacy to personal privacy over the public’s right to know the activities of its government.

The Delaware Attorney General cannot oppose state agencies which decline public records requests, even when they do so in violation of the law. The News Journal sought salary information for employees of the Delaware Psychiatric Center. The Department of Health and Social Services denied the request, then the newspaper appealed to the Attorney General, who declined to take enforcement action.

The Delaware Psychiatric Center is an agency of state government and so the Department of Justice is precluded by statute from investigating any violations of the Freedom of Information Act alleged to have been committed by the Delaware Psychiatric Center.

The citizenry and government both come to the wrong conclusions about the ready availability of public records on the Internet. The City of Raleigh, North Carolina and Wake County joined dozens of other communities that have begun integrating crime activity into interactive mapping. Local real estate developers and agents object, believing that “public crime data… will lower housing prices.” Some people are getting acquainted with the meaning of “public records” for the first time through the government Web sites, complaining about an invasion of privacy because others can see their address and name in the Assessor’s records. Alternatively, they embrace access when the records concern people they want to know about, such as sex offenders. Privacy advocates have campaigned to seal criminal records for first-time offenders, which Florida is doing at 3 times the number as 10 years ago, according to this analysis. Even in these cases, law enforcement continues to keep a record of the criminal history.

Public officials sometimes sound defensive when bringing public records into the Internet age, asserting that particular types of personal information isn’t included. Or they remove the documents or data that was once on the Web, as in the case of the El Paso County, Colorado inmate log. The Sheriff has restricted the listing of the criminal charges to classification numbers as a reaction to inmate assaults. If the availability of public records on the Internet isn’t mandated by law, as in the case of the sex offender registries, it’s always subject to being withdrawn.

Agencies could better serve the goal of open government by reducing the number of exemptions to disclosure. The Washington State Attorney General announced a meeting to review the Public Disclosures Act exemptions, which have grown from 10 in 1972 to more than 300 today.

The County Clerk of Oneida County, New York removed land records from its Web site, a promise of her political campaign. Now, she proposes to make document images available online to a handpicked elite, including attorneys (to whom she was speaking when this offer was made), ostensibly because the records are used in the course of their work. You see the basis for redefining the “public” in “public records”, right? Arbitrary. Capricious. Preferential.

The Tennessee Supreme Court has overturned the law enforcement privilege in the state public records act, making police field interview cards, which The Jackson Sun newspaper had sought, available under the Public Records Act.

The Colorado governor will likely sign a bill next month that will enable people to seal their court records pertaining to charges that were dismissed, not filed or when the defendant is acquitted. The RCFP story

Proposed legislation in North Carolina would redact personal information from vehicle crash reports, make failure to disclose public records a misdemeanor, restrict from discovery prosecutors’ witness interviews and names of confidential informants, and open access to employment information on government employees but close personnel records.

It doesn’t do researchers much good when we discover that personal information databases are taken off the Internet, as recently occurred with the Colorado Marriage and Divorce Index, reported at LegalDockets Online. Especially if there aren’t good alternatives. The Colorado State Archive has a limited statewide marriage and divorce index at the Archives, only through 1939.

The Jefferson County, Colorado Sheriff Crime Mapping database retrieves crime incidents over the past year for the unincorporated areas. Search by parcel number or address.

You never know when a marginal public records database, such as Virginia Freshwater Fish Citations, may break a case, right? Search by name and find where the guy was and the date of the catch.

The statewide New Jersey Property Owner Search at the Asbury Park Press has been updated.

Caddo Parrish, Louisiana Prisoners In Jail database, with case information and booking photos, is online. View in IE.

This isn’t a free divorce index, but for those who are subscribers to VitalSearch you can now search the Nevada Divorce Index, covering 1967-2005.

The State of Colorado active local governments page is an alphabetical list of all 3000 Colorado counties, municipalities, special assessment districts, school districts and property tax entities. Bookmark the list of links to the home Web pages for Colorado counties and cities.

Sometimes seeing the visual relationship of the counties on a map is helpful, and even better when the county image links directly to the home Web page.

State archives are wonderful repositories for documents that aren’t available at other state or county agencies. Like many of the state archives, Colorado has put an index of its holdings online. The Colorado archive also has searchable indexes to historical military, marriage, divorce, probate and census records. Each result list for the particular type of records returns a name and date. Search by partial name through all of the indexes to develop a list of the records where your search terms appear. You can email this list to the Archive to get a quote on the cost for them to retrieve and copy those records.

Unfortunately, the business entity search at the Secretary of State is too restrictive in the search fields, limited to company or Agent name. But the search results are more extensive, linking to document images corresponding to the type of filing. After a free registration, search the UCC filings by partial individual or company name. The free service does not include document images but it does return the date and type of filing, the debtor names, the secured party and the collateral description.

The Colorado Attorney General doesn’t have a database search for AG opinions. But Google can help! To find the appearance of, for example, the word “conservation” in any AG opinions go to your Google search box and enter your query like this:

conservation site:www.ago.state.co.us/agopinions/

This is the results page.

The AG also links to professional license name searches. You can even download records for all licensees by profession.

Search across all professional licensing boards regulated by the Colorado Division of Registrations by licensed individual. The site warns, “While most of the professions and occupations are licensed, others may be registered, certified, or listed. For precise terminology and requirements related to a profession or occupation, please consult the website of the appropriate board or program.”

If you must, view the names, town and (sometimes) photo of the state lottery winners in 2006 and 2007.

Today’s county award goes to Jefferson County. Search for an address by street number only, which returns a list of all addresses with that number. Link to property details, ownership history, parcel mapping and sales information on neighboring properties.

The Colorado Secretary of State has removed UCC document images from the Web site until such time as the Social Security numbers are redacted. The Secretary of State intends to issue new UCC forms that will not include the option of listing Social Security numbers. The policy also suspends bulk electronic sales of the Department’s UCC database. Colorado joins California, which recently instituted the same measures, along with Oregon, Mississippi, Missouri and a half dozen other states

In favorable public records’ news, the Oregon Secretary of State has expanded their online Business Registry Database, adding a search by individual name of Agent, Partner, Manager, President and Secretary.

The Vermont Secretary of State has introduced a “Right To Know” database of resources and laws related to Vermont public records. Search by statutory language, an agency or department’s name, exemption category or exemption and agency.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decided that Board of Bar Overseers and Office of Bar Counsel are judicial agencies which are exempt from the public records provisions. Only documents held by government agencies within the executive branch are subject to the public records act.

Massachusetts criminal show cause hearings will remain closed, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial decided.

The legitimate corporate governance issues that prompted the leak investigation by Hewlett-Packard has fallen from the front pages, now covered with the long expected indictments by the California Attorney General, Bill Lockyer, who is a current candidate for State Treasurer. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Lockyer is charging various parties, from HP’s Patricia Dunn to the individuals who obtained the telephone records, with violations of several criminal statutes. The complaint lists the accusations.

The Federal Trade Commission testified last week on telephone record acquisition before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Joel Winston, an FTC Associate Director, requested that Congress “enact specific prohibitions against telephone records pretexting and to allow the Commission to seek civil penalties against violators…” Winston advocated for an exemption for law enforcement, which have been among the recipients of the data broker’s services, according to those who previously testified before Congress. A law enforcement privilege could further disadvantage criminal defendants, whose representatives would not be accorded the same access.

News and Opinion, in print, audio and video on HP and corporate governance related to telephone records

C-Span, Congressional Hearings on Telephone Pretexting

A Colorado newspaper has revisited a couple of sore subjects for private investigators: the closure of that states’ public records, which I detailed last month [read RCFP's update]; the information broker whose high profile antics set in motion the Gramm-Leach-Bliley legislation.

In State a data broker hub the author claims that the congressional interest in the solicitation of personal information through phone records is focused on Colorado.

Several private investigators –a profession not licensed in Colorado– happily got their names in the article and James Rapp, the former databroker convicted of racketeering, was profiled.

Today, the James Rapp’s are in the spotlight because of their self-promotion on the Internet leading to proposed federal legislation, congressional hearings, state laws specifically restricting procurement of telephone subcriber records, and litigation by state Attorneys General. I’ve written about 20 postings on this topic du jour, including the recent legislation passed in Washington and Florida.

While terms like “fraud” are applied to the practice of impersonating a customer to get their account details, until recently, this has not been unlawful.

The Wikipedia definition of fraud suggests that the pretexter is deceiving the subject, which isn’t the case when contact is made with the telephone provider, and the intent is to bring harm, which is probably not the usual situation.

In criminal law, fraud is the crime or offense of deliberately deceiving another in order to damage them — usually, to obtain property or services from him or her unjustly.

Also see the recent report of the wholesale closure of court records by Colorado courts that claim they don’t have the resources to comply with the state Supreme Court mandate to redact personal information.

The Colorado legislature is on the verge of sealing files in divorce records and marriage applications from the public. There are no exceptions for genealogists or other legal uses of these documents in the marriage applications bill. Financial records in divorce files may be available to debt collectors. Is this privacy fever run amuck? Surely, absolute closure isn’t the course the privacy advocates are seeking.