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.

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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 well established may disappear overnight in the realm of online government records. Visitors to the Jefferson County, Alabama Probate Court online records search - the site for images of land records, personal property and probate recordings - were recently greeted by an unwelcome message.

Due to privacy concerns, this site is unavailable until further notice. Data is still available at the Jefferson County Probate offices.

A reporter alerted the county to the availability of Social Security numbers in some document images - mostly older UCC filings - which were not properly redacted. The site is completely down until all the SSNs can be removed.

California legislation that would have restored the public’s right to view police disciplinary information has apparently been derailed before being heard in the Assembly Public Safety Committee. The California Progress Report gives a detailed review.

The San Mateo County, California Court site has posted a Standing Order restricting personal data in court filings, in accordance with the California Rules of Court. Personal identifiers should be limited to the last 4 digits of the Social Security number, the year of birth, and initials for minor children.

Adoptees received some good news in a bill signed by the governor of Maine. Starting January 1, 2009 anyone adopted in Maine gains the right to their original birth certificate. Only 3 other states have unlocked adoption records that were formerly closed.

In the ever new species of state registries the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services has sprouted the Dangerous Dog Registry!

The Dangerous Dog Registry provides a mechanism for consumers to determine if dangerous dogs reside in their neighborhoods and for local animal control officials to post information about dogs that have been declared dangerous by the local court.

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.

A faithful reader clued me into the usefulness of restaurant inspection reports for finding names of employees at a business. Search the Sacramento County, California Food Facility Restaurant Inspection Reports database by partial street name or facility name. The reports often identify the owners and employees who signed the inspection report.

You may have to do some hunting around to get to the food inspection databases for these California counties. This cached site has more direct links to restaurant inspection reports and closures. Go to the web sites for a state Department of Public Health to find the county environmental health division.

Some states, like Virginia, are kind, and have direct links to each county database of inspections. There doesn’t seem to be a site that keeps a comprehensive collection of these links. Even the State of Washington Office of Environmental Health and Safety lists only 6 counties.

Add your local or state site to this posting’s comments.

You may have noticed that there’s a trend toward eliminating personal identifiers - social security numbers, dates of birth and addresses - from all public records. Any publicly filed documents containing social security numbers are subject to being altered, removing the SSN identifier, or rejected until the personal information is redacted. Currently, financial records, tax liens, deeds and mortgage loan documents are being changed to the extent that it will become impossible to verify whether a federal, state or municipal tax lien belongs to a particular individual.

Fraud investigators, people finders, heir locators, financial lenders and journalists checking on the fitness of our politicians all rely on the unique identifier to develop background and verify identity.

The complete social security number is being removed from filed documents, not just from the Internet indexes and images. And guess what? The commercial databases aren’t going to be able to provide search results that cross reference SSNs on tax liens or judgments filed with county recorder’s offices with a name or address. The indexes of the data resellers are only as good as the original records.

The Missouri Secretary of State just announced that she’s removed the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) document images from the Web site.

The Secretary of State’s Office is taking every step possible to protect personal identification information (Social Security Numbers and Federal Identification Numbers) while continuing to provide service to our customers. As part of that effort, our office has temporarily removed Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) images from the web site as they may inadvertently contain personal identification information.

Although the Virginia legislature has yet to enact a pending bill that would remove SSNs from land records and court filings, Nevada county recorders are rejecting filings that contain social security numbers. This new requirement has created a mess in the courts because the County Clerk is required to submit affirmations that the “5,000 documents filed every day in District Court” have the social security numbers removed. Even in the relatively lower volume state of Vermont the county clerks are overwhelmed by the mandate to extract SSNs from previously submitted documents. The Kansas legislature apparently didn’t consider the costly (both personal and financial, to government and business) consequences of redacting data, declaring that

Unless required by federal law, no document available for public inspection or copying shall contain an individual’s social security number if such document contains such individual’s personal information.

Personal information is name, address, phone number or e-mail address. This applies to

documents recorded in the official records of any recorder of deeds of the county or to any documents filed in the official records of the court and shall be included, but not limited to, such documents of any records that when filed constitutes:
(1) A consensual or nonconsensual lien;

(2) an eviction record;
(3) a judgment;
(4) a conviction or arrest;
(5) a bankruptcy;
(6) a secretary of state filing; or
(7) a professional license.

Humm, no name on a professional license…

All of the 50 state governments will eventually succumb to this “identity theft” protection measure on court records, UCC filings and mortgage loan documents.

Why don’t these state legislatures follow the federal model, masking only part of the SSN, which achieves the aims of fraud prevention while keeping the unique association of the number with a name?

A Virginia legislator is attempting to turn on its head the meaning of trespass, making uninvited forays against the law. SB 1120:

Provides that a person who goes or remains upon residential property or conspires to go or remain upon such property and who knows or reasonably should have known that any resident of such property suffered a substantial personal, physical, mental, or emotional loss, injury, or trauma within the week preceding the entry upon the property is guilty of trespass or conspiring to trespass, regardless of whether the lack of permission to enter the property was communicated to him.

AP reports, Va. bill would allow trespass charges against reporters.

Could this apply to private investigators attempting to interview a complaining witness?

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.

Search real property profiles and current and historical building permits by parcel number or address for unincorporated Sonoma County, California.

Virginia has expanded its listings of incarcerations at the VineLink site, with plans to add all local jails. This is a good source for verifying the location of an inmate, but the site also lists former inmates who are deceased.

The Vermont Criminal Information Center is now providing statewide criminal history checks to all employers, in accordance with a change in the state law. Requests for criminal conviction history must mailed and include an authorization from the applicant. Increased ease of access to criminal records will relieve employers from searching each of Vermont’s county courts.

Virginia is expanding the types of correctional facilities that will be included in the Victim Information and Notification Everyday (VINE) program. Over the next two years, information on criminal offenders incarcerated at jails will be added to the VINE Web site, which already lists prisoners in state facilities.

The Federal Trade Commission, with assistance from the major cell phone carriers, has filed civil suits in 5 federal jurisdictions against resellers of telephone call records, seeking to bar them from this activity and to press them to deliver, to the federal government, any profits they’ve obtained.

U.S. District Court, Central District of California, Federal Trade Commission v. 77 INVESTIGATIONS, INC., and REGINALD KIMBRO:

The FTC brings this action pursuant to Section 13(b) of l9 the Federal Trade Commission Act (”FTC net’), 15 U.S.C. S 53(b), to secure permanent injunctive relief, rescission of contracts,
2211 restitution, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, and other equitable relief against Defendants for violations of Section 23 24 II S(a) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. § aS(a), in connection with surreptitiously obtaining and selling confidential customer phone records without the customer knowledge or authorization.

Read the FTC press release and all case complaints.