Archive for the ‘Colorado’ Category

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.