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> Home values and bankruptcy have been public record for a long time. There is a public interest in being able to see all transactions and history on property,

> Home values and bankruptcy have been public record for a long time. There is a public interest in being able to see all transactions and history on property, and it’s important for debitors to be able to know when people have declared bankruptcy. Part of filing things in court is that it becomes public record. But it's important to note that information was never this easy to access. It's one thing to be able to find out such information on someone in the context of in important financial transaction, it's quite another to be able to easily and casually find out such information for no reason besides curiosity. I think the traditional difficultly in accessing "public records" was an important feature of having them "public." Now that they're so easy to access, we should perhaps re-think how public they really should be.

roarktoohey 9y ago
<<no reason besides curiosity.>> What's wrong about this?
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Our society is full of people who aren't mature enough to handle the information properly. There's a bunch of busybodies who have noting better to do than screw over people's present and future on account of their past. It's not a stretch to imagine the kind of person who cares whether your grass is 3/8" longer than the HOA says it should be showing up at a PTA meeting to complain about how someone who once went bankrupt or starred in an adult film is inherently not qualified to teach kindergarten. That's not something we want to enable so that's why making stuff readily accessible to the public isn't good. If someone wants to dig then let them but digging up someone's past should be hard enough work that you don't do it on a whim and it doesn't scale.
  - roarktoohey 9y ago
    wouldn't the world be better if data was open and easily accessible on everyone? new morals would develop around reality rather than the fake image we are able to project. with constant surveillance i hope we enter into a more honest world.
    - Chaebixi 9y ago
      > wouldn't the world be better if data was open and easily accessible on everyone? > new morals would develop around reality rather than the fake image we are able to project. with constant surveillance i hope we enter into a more honest world. No, clearly not. The mistake you're making is assuming everyone will be affected equally. What would actually happen is some people would get burned, badly and forever, by the lack of privacy (or openness, as you call it). Everyone else will either live in fear of the possibility or go about ignorantly assuming it'll never happen to them. There's value in being able to put your past mistakes behind you or being able to keep information from those who would do you harm.

roarktoohey 9y ago

<<no reason besides curiosity.>> What's wrong about this?

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Our society is full of people who aren't mature enough to handle the information properly. There's a bunch of busybodies who have noting better to do than screw over people's present and future on account of their past. It's not a stretch to imagine the kind of person who cares whether your grass is 3/8" longer than the HOA says it should be showing up at a PTA meeting to complain about how someone who once went bankrupt or starred in an adult film is inherently not qualified to teach kindergarten. That's not something we want to enable so that's why making stuff readily accessible to the public isn't good. If someone wants to dig then let them but digging up someone's past should be hard enough work that you don't do it on a whim and it doesn't scale.
- roarktoohey 9y ago
  wouldn't the world be better if data was open and easily accessible on everyone? new morals would develop around reality rather than the fake image we are able to project. with constant surveillance i hope we enter into a more honest world.
  - Chaebixi 9y ago
    > wouldn't the world be better if data was open and easily accessible on everyone? > new morals would develop around reality rather than the fake image we are able to project. with constant surveillance i hope we enter into a more honest world. No, clearly not. The mistake you're making is assuming everyone will be affected equally. What would actually happen is some people would get burned, badly and forever, by the lack of privacy (or openness, as you call it). Everyone else will either live in fear of the possibility or go about ignorantly assuming it'll never happen to them. There's value in being able to put your past mistakes behind you or being able to keep information from those who would do you harm.