Access the California San Joaquin County Recorder index for filings since 1968 at the official Web site. Details are provided but document images are... Read more »
Searching a nationwide database of court judgments and tax liens may not return all the filed records, even recent ones. You must search the county Recorder official records to do a comprehensive search. Many County Recorders’ indices are available at... Read more »
A committee of the Maryland Judiciary has reconfirmed that juror personal information is a public record, although access varies from nil to extensive, depending on the court. Once again, it takes the determination of a media outlet to enforce or... Read more »
The 2006 report, Future Trends in State Courts, issued by the National Center for State Courts, is a compilation of several dozen articles. One that may be of most interest to investigators and information researchers is, Court Record Access Policies:... Read more »
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... Read more »
Verify voter registration at the Ohio Secretary of State with a last name, county and zipcode. The Ohio SOS Web site also has an unusual database: lookup a licensed minister. Search voter registration records at the Arkansas Secretary of State... Read more »
WorldCat is a single Web site that searches library collections worldwide. More accessible than your local library’s online catalogue, WorldCat also enables you to search through multiple libraries to find resources by name, author or keywords. The DeweyBrowser, a project... Read more »
Open records advocates need to be constantly vigilant to challenge the closure of public records. The Indian River County, Florida Sheriff has shut down their online inmate search database because they didn’t have a cost effective means to filter out... Read more »
Reports written by private investigators for their government clients may be a public record, was the message in a ruling by the California 3rd Appellate District in BRV, Inc. v. Siskiyou County Superior Court. The court determined that the report... Read more »
The Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement of its complaint against Integrity Security & Investigation Services for “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce” by obtaining telephone customer data and credit card purchase records. Four other similar... Read more »