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The Massachusetts Supreme Court is proposing new procedures that, if adopted, would curtail the available personal information in all court files. The court is accepting public comments on its Interim Guidelines for the Protection of Personal Identifying Data in Publicly Accessible Court Documents.

The document proposes redaction of particular personally identifying information in court filings.

Except as provided in these guidelines, a document filed with a court should not include a complete version of any of the following personal identifying data elements. Instead, the filer should redact information from any pre-existing document, or omit information from any document prepared for filing, so that the document includes:
(1) in the case of a social security number, taxpayer identification number, credit card or other financial account number, driver’s license number, or passport number, only the last four digits;
(2) in the case of a birth date, only the year of birth, rather than the exact day or month; and
(3) in the case of a name identified as the mother’s maiden name of a person, only the first initial of that name.

The Pennsylvania Treasury Department has launched a database of state government agency goods and services contracts. Search by any combination of contractor, contracting agency, contract amount or date range. This primarily includes contracts entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2008. See the FAQ’s for database parameters.

The University of New Mexico is revising its policies on access to public records and disclosure of personal information. One of the additions to the list of public record information on University employees is job application, resume or curriculum vitae. The policy changes will be voted on at the August 2008 UNM Board of Regents meeting.

Some states, counties and towns list current registered voters on a Web site. But you might also look for databases and PDF files that voter registrars and town clerks compile of formerly registered voters. States and local agencies variously refer to these non current registered voters lists as purged, inactive or excluded. Use advanced search operators at a search engine to search by different phrases, file types and site domains to identify inactive voters lists. Here are a few I found.

Darien, Connecticut roll of inactive voters.

Voter Purge List, Madison County, Alabama residents.

City of St. Louis Inactive Voters List.

Knox County, Tennessee Purged Inactive Voters is available as of 2005.

Inactive Voter Status - Barnstable, Massachusetts

And, just to remind us that easy come, easy go…In 2000, People for the American Way published a Central Voter File Exclusions List of registered voters Florida planned to purge from the rolls as purported felons. The list was never used and People for the American Way has since removed it from their server.

Town registrars in Massachusetts publish an annual “street list” of local resident names, dates of birth, occupations, veteran status and nationality, which has been a public record. A state Senate bill would change that status, from one of a public record, to one that is only available for federal, state and local governmental use. [Story: Public listings could go private, Matt Murphy, Eagle Boston Bureau]

The common practice of treating search warrants as public records comports with the law, according to an Opinion issued by the Illinois Attorney General. Once the warrants have been returned to the court they are part of the court record and must be available for public inspection.The Sangamon County State’s Attorney backed the Circuit Clerk, who was apparently one of the few court clerks denying the public access to the executed search warrants. As one of this story’s commentators noted, “at some point they have to be made public because it is the public’s dollars which finance them. Making it clear that every search warrant will eventually become public keeps those issuing them honest. We do want judges issuing them and police seeking them kept honest don’t we?”

A Washington State school district narrowly won support from the state Supreme Court in a decision that pitted the Public Records Act against attorney-client privilege for government agencies. Perhaps most damaging to open government, noted in the Justices’ dissent, is the aspect of the ruling allows agencies to seek a judicial determination as to whether a requested public record must be disclosed.

A law firm that accessed and viewed archived Web pages of an adversary through Archive.org did not violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act , even though those Web pages were not supposed to be available, an Eastern District of Pennsylvania judge ruled. Federal Judge Clears Law Firm Accused of Hacking Opponents’ Web Archives, New Jersey Law Journal, July 24, 2007

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that documents covered by attorney-client privilege are not public records. Work-product may still be covered by the public records law. Attorney-Client Privilege and Public Records Access, Massachusetts Law Updates, July 23, 2007.

Personal emails on government computers may be a public record, which should be determined by a court, in a ruling of the Supreme Court of Arkansas. The determination may rest in whether the non work related computer activity “should be carried out by a public official or employee.” Personal e-mail on public computers not always public, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, July 23, 2007.

Also, see my postings on this theme in other states: Arizona and California, Idaho, and the Sixth Circuit.

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.]

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 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.

Many police departments are incorporating online crime and traffic maps into their public safety efforts. Some enterprising folks (New York, Chicago, Boston, and more) gather the data from public agencies and post their own mapping program. Here are a few new additions:

The Tulsa, Oklahoma, Police Department displays current accidents on a map, and lists live calls for service, including address.

The Manteca Police Department, in California, has just put a crime
mapping program online, which provides a visual display of crime activity by general neighborhood. No specific address or name searching is available.

I previously wrote about a site that attempts to collect links to all the agencies with online crime mapping.

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.

A Non-Computer Lawyer’s Guide to Investigation on the Internet, a portal to investigator guides and useful links, particularly for criminal defense investigators, is hosted by a Massachusetts Public Defender. Some of the material is limited and there are dead links, but much of the information leads to valuable resources. Forensics materials include, New York State Department of Health, Guidelines for Determining Brain Death.

The Eyewitness Identification Research Laboratory, at the University of Texas, produced a 2006 study, in conjunction with various Illinois law enforcement agencies, Report to the Legislature of the State Of Illinois: The Illinois Pilot Program On Seqential Double-Blind Identification Procedures.

Find hospitals by state, town or name.

A Massachusetts Supreme Court opinion expands the scope of reciprocal discovery in criminal trials to encompass interviews of prosecution witnesses conducted by the defense where material is uncovered that might be used for impeachment. The opinion outlines the trial court case circumstances that lead to the Supreme Court’s involvement.

The defendant later filed a motion for additional discovery, seeking the names of all the Commonwealth’s prospective trial witnesses and an opportunity to inspect all documentary and physical evidence that the Commonwealth intended to offer at trial. A Superior Court judge allowed the motion, contingent on the defendant providing the same discovery to the Commonwealth, and limiting the obligation to such evidence that pertained to each party’s case-in-chief.

Subsequently, the Commonwealth filed a motion for additional reciprocal discovery. In its motion, the Commonwealth sought, among other requests, the disclosure of any written or recorded statement of any prospective witness, including potential witnesses for the Commonwealth, that the defendant intended to offer at trial for any purpose, including for impeachment.

The New York Times article notes that Massachusetts is often a legal trend setter, which could lead to broader adoption of this expansive view of reciprocal discovery beyond the three states that currently have it in place: New Jersey, Minnesota and New York.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled that the police reports of the Harvard University Police Department are not public records.

The Court also rejected The Crimson’s claims that private entities, once endowed with certain state powers, become public entities. Instead, the Court held that even when granted special powers, HUPD does not become “an agency of the commonwealth such that it becomes subject to the mandates of the public records law.”

This determination runs counter to an Indiana Court of Appeals decision that the retention of records by a private entity related to government agency business are public records.

Surely the authorization accorded to any police agency to arrest falls within the public purview.

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