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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?

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a ruling that could advance employee rights to privacy protection of their personal email generated at a workplace computer.

In Warshak v. United States, the federal court upheld the finding that e-mail users are entitled to the same expectation of privacy as persons using the telephone.
…
“Employers should be aware that the Sixth Court did not state that a workplace-monitoring policy will always defeat an employee’s expectation of privacy. If, for example, a company representative with appropriate authority tells an employee that the company will not read his e-mail despite the existence of a policy to the contrary, the employee may be able to argue that he did have a reasonable expectation [of privacy] in his work e-mail,” he cautioned.

“It also is possible that an employee who becomes aware of his employer’s practice not to enforce its right to monitor e-mail may be able to show that he had an expectation of privacy in his e-mail,” Gordon concluded.

For all of these reasons, said Martin Jaron, litigation partner at Holland & Knight and cochair of its electronic discovery team, this decision is just a way station in the broader discussion of privacy rights.

A Washington State Superior Court denied a request for an injunction that would have required a state agency to produce public records in electronic form. Thurston County Judge Christine Pomeroy directed the requester to seek legislative clarification, that electronic copies of records are not currently required to be produced under the Public Disclosure Act.

Inmates in Iowa jails for 23 counties are now on the Vinelink notification service. More counties and the Department of Corrections inmates will be added later this year.

The Wisconsin State Journal is suing a police department for access to police officer employment and disciplinary records. A public records request for copies of complaints brought against a particular officer was denied by the law enforcement agency.

The Oakland, California police department is in the process of updating its public records policies and training procedures. The department is also installing cameras in their patrol cars and, in this article, the records supervisor mentions that these videos will be available under the Public Records Act. Last year, Californians Aware conducted a survey of several hundred California law enforcement agencies to determine their openness to releasing records covered under the Public Records Act. The Oakland Police Department was among the agencies receiving the lowest score.

The sex offender registry for Tennessee has added a mapping program, which will go online July 1, enabling a radius search. Changes in the laws this year will increase the number of offenders required to register, make more names public that have been considered confidential and require all those convicted of a sex crime in the past, regardless of the date, to register by August 1st.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that a prison telephone audiotape recording was a public record because it was played in an open court hearing. Even though the recording did not meet the evidence requirements to be submitted at trial it was nevertheless a judicial record.

See the recently added category - What’s New At… - in the left sidebar, which includes a link to the collection of databases assembled by the Asbury Park Press. Just online is the salary database of 2006 federal employees. Search by name or agency to find their salary. Not all government employees are included.

Employees involved in security work, FBI, CIA, defense department, nuclear materials, and other jobs essential to national security are excluded. The list contains most executive branch employees but does not cover the White House, Congress, the Postal Service and independent agencies and commissions.

Dust is being stirred up over the Michigan employees salary online database. Some folks in government have forgotten that they’re working for the rest of us, that transparency is critical for good government. Unfortunately, they don’t see the advantage of knowing the income of similarly employed co-workers.

The online Iowa State Employee Salary Book is searchable by name from 1993 to the present.

South Dakota’s governor is still claiming that government employee names and rate of pay are not public records.

The online versions of mainstream newspapers continue to distinguish themselves by collecting public records, then making them searchable in a database. I mentioned two sites in a posting last week - DataUniverse (New Jersey) and DataCentral (Iowa). The Boston Herald is doing its part to sunshine the workings of the Massachusetts state government in a database identified as the 2007 State Employee Payroll. This database is unique in collecting public records from the government and making them easily accessible to the public, in a form not otherwise available. Search by partial last name or agency, or combine the two. A search identifies the department, the employee’s name, the job description, weekly hours and annual rate of pay. [Via Media Nation]

The Tennessee Leaf-Chronicle isn’t giving us a unique database but it is linking to some of the public records online databases at the government Web sites.

The Honolulu Advertiser’s Boating Safety Searchable Database is drawn from Coast Guard accident reports. Not all states are included and the site has few details on the extent of the data and the compiling process. Some document images of accident reports are here. The newspaper also has links to selective public records databases hosted at government sites.

Search high school graduates, government salaried employees and high school athletes for selective counties and municipalities in Kentucky and Indiana, at the Courier-Journal DataCenter. Plot property transfers in Jefferson County, Kentucky on a map. Search by street or zip code and sort by date, address or sales price.

Death Notices, building permits and smoking complaints are among the databases collected at this Cincinnati, Ohio paper.

Search Indiana state employee salaries by name and the Indiana Attorney General consumer litigation by company name. Indiana State Police speeding violations are searchable by name or location for the past 6 months.

The Des Moines Register has a variety of types of personal information databases that it has assembled from Iowa state government records. Court fines and business executive salaries are available statewide. Vital records indexes, property transfers, high school graduates and bankruptcies for Polk County can be searched by partial name. Records are indexed for 2007 only.

Check your area Gannett newspaper for their public records databases and public records directories.
[Thanks to Mark Schaver at Depth Reporting for many of these links.]

Many states and local municipalities have rosters of city, county and state public officials available in a single PDF document that can be saved to your computer for later reference. Don’t confuse these rosters with the state telephone directories, which list key individuals in state government and their departments. Rosters provide names of elected and appointed officials and associated agency, with street addresses, email addresses and Web sites. Save this to your computer or print it out so you’ll know to whom to direct your public records requests.

The California Secretary of State describes the California Roster, which is online, for each of the past 5 years.

The California Roster, also known as the Roster of Public Officials, is a listing of California’s public officeholders, including our United States government officials, the Constitutional officers, members of the State Senate and Assembly, the Judicial branch, county officials, and Incorporated city and town officials.

It also includes a history of California’s office holders, descriptions of the state emblems, a listing of all state agencies, departments, boards and commissions, a listing of the unincorporated areas, and information on the state officials for each state in the nation.

The current Missouri Roster details every executive, legislative and judicial office holder, as well as each county commissioner and department director.

Some counties also publish a Roster, which, like this one produced by the San Diego County Registrar of Voters, contain the same information down to the city level.

The Iowa Roster is located at the legislative site.

The Rhode Island Department of Administration Web site has the Directory of City and Town Officials, along with many other government publications. So you may have to search various government Web sites to find where a Roster is housed.

There are also 50 state directories of single agency types. Montana has a Roster of State Livestock Health Officials.

Suddenly, government directories have become more intriguing.

Illinois has unveiled its Illinois Child Murderer and Violent Offender Against Youth Registry.

Search by name, city, zip code, county or offender status. Perhaps the kinks aren’t worked out, but I couldn’t get search results by any criteria. You can also map offenders, but only if you know the street address and zip code. Here’s what the database covers.

The CMVOY registry contains individuals convicted of specific crimes in which the victim was a minor, but the crime was not sexually motivated. The crimes – as defined by HB 4193, signed by Governor Blagojevich on June 27, 2006 – include kidnapping, aggravated kidnapping, unlawful restraint, aggravated unlawful restraint, and any attempt to commit any of these offenses when the victim is under 18 years of age and when the defendant is not a parent of the victim. Other offenses include forcible detention, child abduction or murder when the victim was a person under 18 years of age and the defendant was at least 17 years of age.

A Santa Clara County, California Superior Court judged has ordered the county to make its GIS property parcel mapping database available to the public at minimal cost. The California First Amendment Coalition took the county to court, upending the government’s myriad excuses for keeping the map data out of public reach. Reported by AP

A new Texas Administrative Rule institutes a prohibition in the recording of personal information by notary publics.

There’s been much debate in legislatures and government administration about which public records should be sealed. The Texas legislature is considering whether to withhold search warrant affidavits for 60 days from public view. The Nevada Legislature failed to set guidelines or restrict judges from sealing court records and now the state Supreme Court may establish its own requirements.

Iowa State regulatory boards that license professionals such as doctors, nurses, dentists and psychologists will be required to release the record of formal charges against medical professionals that stem from patient complaints.

The Cerro Gordo County, Iowa Sheriff announced that he is removing the arrest warrants database from their Web site. The active arrest warrants list from 2006 is still available through Archive.org. Complaints lead to the Sheriff seeking a county attorney opinion, which said that warrants are not public records until the subject is arrested.

Iowa legislation SF204, signed last month by the governor, makes explicit the terms of release of active arrest warrants.

A criminal or juvenile justice agency may redisseminate arrest data, and the name, photograph, physical description, and other identifying information concerning a person who is wanted or being sought if a warrant for the arrest of that person has been issued.

At the same time, the Linn County Sheriff released their active warrants list, which is now posted on an Iowa newspaper Web site.

This database contains more than 2,000 outstanding arrest warrants for people wanted by the Linn County Sheriff’s Office. The oldest warrants date back to 1965 and include warrants for everything from parking violations, missed court appearances to felony theft and sexual-abuse charges.

This newspaper site also has mapping of recent crimes in the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City area, which includes address of crime location.

Many Iowa police departments and Sheriff offices lists their active warrants.

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?

The Virgina legislature is entertaining bills that would alter public records.

For example, there’s a bill to remove Social Security numbers from court documents and land records. Another would remove Social Security numbers from voter records before those records are sold to anyone in another state. A third just makes it generally illegal to make publicly available someone else’s Social Security number, even if the number was gotten from public documents.

Some California police departments have had the support of judges in keeping search warrant affidavits out of court files. All this may change because of an appeals court decision.

The Superior Courts in Los Angeles and Orange counties have for years allowed police to keep the only version of the sealed affidavit they use to obtain a search warrant without filing a copy with the court, a practice that defense attorneys said was rife with potential abuse.

The use of the procedure in Orange County began receiving attention two weeks ago, after a state appeals court ruling in a local case involving a search warrant.

Asked by a reporter, Los Angeles County Superior Court officials said this week that judges there also allowed officers to keep the sealed affidavits.

The practice was so little-known that the Los Angeles County public defenders office, with one of the largest caseloads in the country, did not learn about it until the appeals court decision.

Keeping the previous story in mind, it comes as no surprise that the First Amendment advocate, Californians Aware, has uncovered wide spread violations of the California Public Records Act by law enforcement agencies. Read the report, Public Access to Law Enforcement Information, which includes statistics and a database of audit results by agency.

Medical privacy does not have primacy over the collection of unpaid bills, according to a Mississippi Supreme Court ruling. The collection agency included an itemized medical invoice in a court filing, but that action did not breach patient privacy because it didn’t contain confidential doctor-patient communications.

Iowa Court records related to juveniles will no longer be included in the court system’s online database.

Under a new law starting this month, names of juveniles who are ten to 17 will only appear online when a case is completed and the individual has been found guilty.

OpentheGovernment.org lists several new reports released by open government organizations. The National Freedom of Information Coalition (NFOIC) report, Federal Controls on State Information Disclosure:FERPA, HIPAA and DPPA, addresses “barriers to state records that federal legislation erects.”

Also, go to The National Freedom of Information Coalition site for a 50 state resource guide to state public information access laws, FOI advocates, publications and form letters for public record requests. Follow the links at each state site to reach the state organizations that advocate for open records.

The Idaho page has a link to the Idaho Press Club, Open Records Information page, a digest of relevant state laws in a question and answer format. The state page for Iowa lists the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, which cites the state laws on public access to government information but also has explanatory notes. The Iowa Association of Private Investigators is among this organization’s sustaining members, setting an example that all private investigator professional groups should follow with their state Freedom of Information advocates.

The Canadian Newspaper Association recently released its Freedom of Information Audit on the response of federal, municipal and provincial governments to public information requests.

The methods that HP contractors used to secure telephone call logs, “the pretext story”, repeated ad infinitum, has reporters looking for new approaches to this story. The San Jose Mercury News has posted the transcript of a call to Verizon Wireless from 1st Source Information Specialists. It’s an odd selection for an example of a pretext from an information broker since no personal information appears to have been released. Perhaps Verizon’s interest in providing the telephone conversation text is to bolster their position that they are taking effective measures to foil non subscriber access to accounts.

The investigation of the Hewlett-Packard contractors who secured the telephone call logs of phone numbers registered to reporters and HP directors is revealing footprints in Florida, Massachusetts and Iowa, which could lead to investigations and prosecutions by those states Attorneys General.

Meanwhile, the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent a letter to Hewlett-Packard
requesting that the company turn over documents listing employees and contractors involved in the leak probe, and “a list of all individuals or entities whose telephone records or other personal consumer information were procured…” The letter specifically requested that no telephone records be provided. I guess the House committee doesn’t want that to become a public record.

Many state appeals and supreme courts post their decisions at their Web sites and will deliver newly issued opinions, some with captions and summaries, to you by email or syndication. Look at your state’s court site to determine if it offers a notification service.

The Iowa Court of Appeals offers email notification of “supreme court opinions, court of appeals opinions, press releases and orders.” Conversely, the New Jersey judiciary Web site posts opinions and calendars of upcoming decisions but doesn’t have a built-in notification. In this case, I use the low-cost service, WatchThatPage, which sends me the new content whenever this Web site is updated. I receive case summaries that look like this.

A-52-05 State v. Saleem Crawley (58,340)
Where police officers, in response to an anonymous tip about criminal activity, requested defendant to stop and answer some questions because he matched the description provided in the tip, can defendant be found guilty of obstruction for running away? Certification granted: 10/12/2005
Argued: 2/15/06
Decided: 7/24/06

I can then go to the court site to read the full opinion. Rutgers Law library has constructed an RSS feed for New Jersey appeals and tax cases.

Even better, the Utah Appellate Court provides real-time delivery of court opinions by RSS, a free means of receiving updated content from user selected sites. The RSS program I like is Bloglines. Here you can collect and read all your dynamically refreshed content at one Web site.

Ohio, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Nevada and Maryland all distribute court opinions by RSS. The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals’ opinions are also syndicated.

The Placer County, California Assessor site has added parcel map viewing and printing. Enter a parcel number to obtain owner name and associated map page image.

The sex offender and violent offender databases operated by each state are always being tweaked. The Iowa site has added an e-mail notification feature, which is available at many state sites and also at Family Watchdog.

Several states have either created or authorized the development of a Web registry naming people convicted of making or selling methamphetamines. Utah and Oregon may be the most recent states to establish a meth boutique database. Montana includes convicted meth manufacturers in its Sexual and Violent Offender Registry.

Crash reports issued by the Iowa State Police are available, in an abbreviated, redacted form online. The index search fields are date, county and type of incident, any one of which, or all three can be selected. The returned results include the injured person’s name and town of residence.