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I generally support regulations that protect privacy, as I'm sure most of us do. But they can come at a very real human cost, as in this case. Especially when i

I generally support regulations that protect privacy, as I'm sure most of us do. But they can come at a very real human cost, as in this case. Especially when it comes to regulations that affect people who aren't able to express their preferences (because they have died, are incapacitated, are not able to think clearly for whatever reason, etc), any general rule is going to lead to some bad outcomes. FWIW I tend to think 911 calls ought to be public because they are public records. There are probably ways of making them public but not completely easy to access (eg, you could only listen to a specific record on site in a records archive). That would at least guard against the problems of releasing everything on the internet, which would impose major reputational risks to everybody who ever made a 911 call.

ghaff 7y ago
This is one of the privacy conundrums that we mostly have never come to grips with. There are a lot of things that would seem to be legitimately public records. But there's arguably a big difference between records that you have to go to some county clerk's office to access and possibly provide at least a cursory justification for doing so and being able to click a few keys on your computer and skim through records for the hell of it. Both are public at some level but one is not like the other.
- dvtrn 7y ago
  Could you articulate this “big difference” a bit more? So far the only one I can parse from your comment is ease of access, driving to a clerk versus walking to my desk. That doesn’t seem particularly convincing. Or at least I don’t see how this feeds into the privacy “conundrum”
  - mruts 7y ago
    I could be wrong but maybe one is recursively enumerable and the other is not? i.e at a clerk you need to know what you’re looking for in contrast to a list of records that you can just look through.
    - dvtrn 7y ago
      The records are no less public in either situation? They can be accessed by anyone, regardless if they’re actively looking for a specific record or stumbling across one while scrolling through their local clerk database on a Saturday afternoon. I still don’t understand the conceit. If one were to say checking documents out from a central clerking office acts as a check or something against unauthorized and potentially unethical use of public records, well then yes absolutely I can see some merit. As delivered presently, not as much.
      - mruts 7y ago
        So could you ask the clerk to produce every piece of information he has? Would he be obligated to give it to you?
        dvtrn 7y ago
        Depends on the jurisdictions’ open records laws I would imagine yes they more than likely would be. Presumably if they have such statutes, some jurisdictions have provisions to catch such types “burdensome requests” and either slap a heavy fee for processing such a request and hopefully deter the requestor, or they appeal to a higher court when denying the request entirely But otherwise if a state has open records laws and you make a lawful request for a large body of publicly available records then I’m inclined to say by definition the clerk is required to provide them provided all requirements of the request are satisfied.
      - nvusuvu 7y ago
        It allows voyeurism.
        dvtrn 7y ago
        Of whom?
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - reacweb 7y ago
    You can read the car plate of cars passing in front of you. It is public information. If you can easily gather the location of all cars at any time, it becomes a big privacy problem. You can identify husbands cheating...
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - wool_gather 7y ago
      Indeed. I can't help thinking that the fact that some piece of tech makes a qualitative change like this means that there's some fundamental flaw somewhere with the way we associate a person with a public record or identifier. But I'm not really sure what that flaw is, or what to do about it.
      - pixl97 7y ago
        Nobody is sure how to solve it because the problem is with people and the culture we have built around having actual privacy in the past. Technology has essentially robbed us of it, which is problematic as technology solves lots of other problems so we just cant get rid of it. This is really similar to the music industry and the problem of piracy. Bits are easy to copy and hard to prevent the copy of.
  - paulsutter 7y ago
    Take for the example Norway’s rules (cited below) that tax returns can be viewed by anyone, and the list of who viewed each record is also public. This requires limitations on how the data can be reproduced. If you need to drive to see a clerk it’s a lot harder to get access, and that’s a reasonable barrier. The clerk can also have reasonable limits on how many you can request and whether you can make a copy. Each of these rules do have an impact on how widely information is used or disseminated, and can limit data mining style use. Note that some of these limitations (like preventing a copy) can be more difficult when accessing from a website. So yes, there are many useful limitations than can be placed on sharing of data that have a real practical impact on privacy.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - LeifCarrotson 7y ago
    I believe that if volume, processing, or accessibility of some new technology or information stream changes the access patterns to that information, that implies that the nature of that information gathering and accessibility needs to be re-evaluated. A cop calling in a suspect license plate is one thing, an automated system reading all license plates at all intersections and tracking every vehicle in a city is different, and should have regulatory or judicial oversight applied in light of the new access. The fact that any one of those plates could have been seen at each intersection by a cop who happened to be there does not mean that license plate readers don't change the nature of that information. A lawyer asking a clerk for a transcript of a call regarding a pending case is one thing. Transcribing all calls and getting a text message when someone called 911 yesterday and mentioned your name is a big difference.
- jplayer01 7y ago
  > But there's arguably a big difference between records that you have to go to some county clerk's office to access and possibly provide at least a cursory justification for doing so and being able to click a few keys on your computer and skim through records for the hell of it. I think it's important to consider the context. Privacy is important, but in an environment where authorities happen to "disappear" records that might be used against them or could be used to hold them to account, and fight tooth and nail to prevent easy access to them as in the US (and are often able to weaponize the courts to prevent access), there's a case to be argued that there are clear benefits to keeping it public in a way where there are no barriers.
  - evgen 7y ago
    The converse is also true: in an environment where random strangers take perverse pleasure in using any record in which you may appear to provide the worse possible representation, where you have no way of controlling this potential invasion of your privacy, where the record will endure _forever_ (and other groups will go to great lengths to ensure access to these records by anyone on the planet who happens to be curious), and where your ability to contextualize an event in which you happen to appear will be drowned out by whatever outrage machine has the biggest megaphone and fastest meme team, there is a strong case to be argued that there should be significant and prohibitive barriers to public access.
    - jplayer01 7y ago
      They're 911 calls. Show me one example of a 911 call and its misrepresentation being used to really harm somebody. Control only means those in power will abuse that control and prohibit its use as a method of ensuring accountability and transparency in how 911 hotlines are run. Further, I think privacy is worth preserving for privacy's sake. We all have a right to it. But there are times where we have to give up rights in order to serve the interests of the community. I know it's not a popular way of thinking in the US, but it's just a fact of living in a society with other people. We don't have the complete freedom to do anything and everything we want. Giving up the privacy of 911 calls has clear benefits, and I haven't yet seen sufficient evidence that enough harm is caused by them being public to consider otherwise. Even further, these states aren't making these records private for privacy reasons. You're just playing into their narrative and defending them on morality when they're doing it to cover their asses.
- wpietri 7y ago
  One way that I've often thought we should divide it is that part of the public record is who is accessing the record and why they're doing it. E.g., I'd be happier with the government having data on me if I knew I'd get notified any time somebody looked at it. And I'd also feel safer if privacy-focused non-profits were watching the stats on who's viewing what to ask questions like, "Why has Greg looked up 14 addresses on women in his neighborhood over the last month?"
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- traderjane 7y ago
  It's a problem of scale and similar to other issues of automated criminal justice. If having your issues heard in court were a few clicks away that would blow the system up, which is why cities swat away automated filings in any way possible. It implies an uncomfortable truth that justice relies on underutilisation in order to service demand.
mnw21cam 7y ago
To play devil's advocate, 911 calls are information about yourself that you are giving to the government. There isn't anything more than that which makes it a "public record". I can think of other types of information about yourself that one gives to the government, such as your tax return. Should that be public record, and how is it different to a 911 recording?
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Norway offers an interesting example. There, tax returns are public... but so is who looked yours up. https://qz.com/784186/in-norway-you-can-browse-everyones-tax-returns-but-theres-a-good-reason-you-might-not-want-to/ https://qz.com/784186/in-norway-you-can-browse-everyones-tax...
  - steve76 7y ago
    Norway houses architects of the Final Solution, both right and left. They owe me money, and have absolutely no say into any debate until they pay. They finance war criminals who kill undesirables, including Americans, to this day. I should have gone radio silent after Hiroshima, and just kept dropping bomb, after bomb, after bomb, after bomb, after bomb. That is how much the world has failed me.
  - kbenson 7y ago
    That dies provide an interesting example. Requiring the accessing party disclose who they are (and who they may be acting for), and putting strict access limits on the requests based on that (once per 10 minutes or hour possibly, unless you petition for a slightly higher access rate because of need, such as your profession) and all under penalty of prosecution of the U.S. government neatly solves the issue for me I think. If you have to supply your SSN, name and an email for each request, and the name and SSN are shown to later requesters, that easily allows the government to track abuse of an SSN to access records, allows for preventing third parties from accumulating all the records to circumvent the controls, and allows public view of records that might be problematic to have negative privacy consequences if data mined completely.
usrusr 7y ago
It would also come at a very real human cost if people started thinking twice before calling 911. Of all situations where you do not want self-censoring effects to happen, this is the one that stands out above all others.
- ryacko 7y ago
  It is recommended (IANAL, read this over the internet, but this seems legally sound to me) that if you are involved in an incident of self-defense, one would say, “I want to report a ____” and go on to explain the /outcome/ of events to the operator.
- drdeadringer 7y ago
  I deeply feel both sides of this. * If I were receiving domestic violence and in fear of my life, how would I feel calling emergency services knowing my screams for help in one of my most vulnerable states in life would later be public? * If I suspected I could be vulnerable to domestic violence, how inspired might I be to make the same type of call once hearing another person's similar emergency call? Two sides of a coin to consider.
gwbas1c 7y ago
People call 911 in domestic abuse situations. Those should not be made public record. Doing so will give an abuser more leverage.

ghaff 7y ago

This is one of the privacy conundrums that we mostly have never come to grips with. There are a lot of things that would seem to be legitimately public records. But there's arguably a big difference between records that you have to go to some county clerk's office to access and possibly provide at least a cursory justification for doing so and being able to click a few keys on your computer and skim through records for the hell of it. Both are public at some level but one is not like the other.

dvtrn 7y ago
Could you articulate this “big difference” a bit more? So far the only one I can parse from your comment is ease of access, driving to a clerk versus walking to my desk. That doesn’t seem particularly convincing. Or at least I don’t see how this feeds into the privacy “conundrum”
- mruts 7y ago
  I could be wrong but maybe one is recursively enumerable and the other is not? i.e at a clerk you need to know what you’re looking for in contrast to a list of records that you can just look through.
  - dvtrn 7y ago
    The records are no less public in either situation? They can be accessed by anyone, regardless if they’re actively looking for a specific record or stumbling across one while scrolling through their local clerk database on a Saturday afternoon. I still don’t understand the conceit. If one were to say checking documents out from a central clerking office acts as a check or something against unauthorized and potentially unethical use of public records, well then yes absolutely I can see some merit. As delivered presently, not as much.
    - mruts 7y ago
      So could you ask the clerk to produce every piece of information he has? Would he be obligated to give it to you?
      - dvtrn 7y ago
        Depends on the jurisdictions’ open records laws I would imagine yes they more than likely would be. Presumably if they have such statutes, some jurisdictions have provisions to catch such types “burdensome requests” and either slap a heavy fee for processing such a request and hopefully deter the requestor, or they appeal to a higher court when denying the request entirely But otherwise if a state has open records laws and you make a lawful request for a large body of publicly available records then I’m inclined to say by definition the clerk is required to provide them provided all requirements of the request are satisfied.
    - nvusuvu 7y ago
      It allows voyeurism.
      - dvtrn 7y ago
        Of whom?
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- reacweb 7y ago
  You can read the car plate of cars passing in front of you. It is public information. If you can easily gather the location of all cars at any time, it becomes a big privacy problem. You can identify husbands cheating...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - wool_gather 7y ago
    Indeed. I can't help thinking that the fact that some piece of tech makes a qualitative change like this means that there's some fundamental flaw somewhere with the way we associate a person with a public record or identifier. But I'm not really sure what that flaw is, or what to do about it.
    - pixl97 7y ago
      Nobody is sure how to solve it because the problem is with people and the culture we have built around having actual privacy in the past. Technology has essentially robbed us of it, which is problematic as technology solves lots of other problems so we just cant get rid of it. This is really similar to the music industry and the problem of piracy. Bits are easy to copy and hard to prevent the copy of.
- paulsutter 7y ago
  Take for the example Norway’s rules (cited below) that tax returns can be viewed by anyone, and the list of who viewed each record is also public. This requires limitations on how the data can be reproduced. If you need to drive to see a clerk it’s a lot harder to get access, and that’s a reasonable barrier. The clerk can also have reasonable limits on how many you can request and whether you can make a copy. Each of these rules do have an impact on how widely information is used or disseminated, and can limit data mining style use. Note that some of these limitations (like preventing a copy) can be more difficult when accessing from a website. So yes, there are many useful limitations than can be placed on sharing of data that have a real practical impact on privacy.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- LeifCarrotson 7y ago
  I believe that if volume, processing, or accessibility of some new technology or information stream changes the access patterns to that information, that implies that the nature of that information gathering and accessibility needs to be re-evaluated. A cop calling in a suspect license plate is one thing, an automated system reading all license plates at all intersections and tracking every vehicle in a city is different, and should have regulatory or judicial oversight applied in light of the new access. The fact that any one of those plates could have been seen at each intersection by a cop who happened to be there does not mean that license plate readers don't change the nature of that information. A lawyer asking a clerk for a transcript of a call regarding a pending case is one thing. Transcribing all calls and getting a text message when someone called 911 yesterday and mentioned your name is a big difference.
jplayer01 7y ago
> But there's arguably a big difference between records that you have to go to some county clerk's office to access and possibly provide at least a cursory justification for doing so and being able to click a few keys on your computer and skim through records for the hell of it. I think it's important to consider the context. Privacy is important, but in an environment where authorities happen to "disappear" records that might be used against them or could be used to hold them to account, and fight tooth and nail to prevent easy access to them as in the US (and are often able to weaponize the courts to prevent access), there's a case to be argued that there are clear benefits to keeping it public in a way where there are no barriers.
- evgen 7y ago
  The converse is also true: in an environment where random strangers take perverse pleasure in using any record in which you may appear to provide the worse possible representation, where you have no way of controlling this potential invasion of your privacy, where the record will endure _forever_ (and other groups will go to great lengths to ensure access to these records by anyone on the planet who happens to be curious), and where your ability to contextualize an event in which you happen to appear will be drowned out by whatever outrage machine has the biggest megaphone and fastest meme team, there is a strong case to be argued that there should be significant and prohibitive barriers to public access.
  - jplayer01 7y ago
    They're 911 calls. Show me one example of a 911 call and its misrepresentation being used to really harm somebody. Control only means those in power will abuse that control and prohibit its use as a method of ensuring accountability and transparency in how 911 hotlines are run. Further, I think privacy is worth preserving for privacy's sake. We all have a right to it. But there are times where we have to give up rights in order to serve the interests of the community. I know it's not a popular way of thinking in the US, but it's just a fact of living in a society with other people. We don't have the complete freedom to do anything and everything we want. Giving up the privacy of 911 calls has clear benefits, and I haven't yet seen sufficient evidence that enough harm is caused by them being public to consider otherwise. Even further, these states aren't making these records private for privacy reasons. You're just playing into their narrative and defending them on morality when they're doing it to cover their asses.
wpietri 7y ago
One way that I've often thought we should divide it is that part of the public record is who is accessing the record and why they're doing it. E.g., I'd be happier with the government having data on me if I knew I'd get notified any time somebody looked at it. And I'd also feel safer if privacy-focused non-profits were watching the stats on who's viewing what to ask questions like, "Why has Greg looked up 14 addresses on women in his neighborhood over the last month?"
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
traderjane 7y ago
It's a problem of scale and similar to other issues of automated criminal justice. If having your issues heard in court were a few clicks away that would blow the system up, which is why cities swat away automated filings in any way possible. It implies an uncomfortable truth that justice relies on underutilisation in order to service demand.

mnw21cam 7y ago

To play devil's advocate, 911 calls are information about yourself that you are giving to the government. There isn't anything more than that which makes it a "public record". I can think of other types of information about yourself that one gives to the government, such as your tax return. Should that be public record, and how is it different to a 911 recording?

ceejayoz 7y ago
Norway offers an interesting example. There, tax returns are public... but so is who looked yours up. https://qz.com/784186/in-norway-you-can-browse-everyones-tax-returns-but-theres-a-good-reason-you-might-not-want-to/ https://qz.com/784186/in-norway-you-can-browse-everyones-tax...
- steve76 7y ago
  Norway houses architects of the Final Solution, both right and left. They owe me money, and have absolutely no say into any debate until they pay. They finance war criminals who kill undesirables, including Americans, to this day. I should have gone radio silent after Hiroshima, and just kept dropping bomb, after bomb, after bomb, after bomb, after bomb. That is how much the world has failed me.
- kbenson 7y ago
  That dies provide an interesting example. Requiring the accessing party disclose who they are (and who they may be acting for), and putting strict access limits on the requests based on that (once per 10 minutes or hour possibly, unless you petition for a slightly higher access rate because of need, such as your profession) and all under penalty of prosecution of the U.S. government neatly solves the issue for me I think. If you have to supply your SSN, name and an email for each request, and the name and SSN are shown to later requesters, that easily allows the government to track abuse of an SSN to access records, allows for preventing third parties from accumulating all the records to circumvent the controls, and allows public view of records that might be problematic to have negative privacy consequences if data mined completely.

usrusr 7y ago

It would also come at a very real human cost if people started thinking twice before calling 911. Of all situations where you do not want self-censoring effects to happen, this is the one that stands out above all others.

ryacko 7y ago
It is recommended (IANAL, read this over the internet, but this seems legally sound to me) that if you are involved in an incident of self-defense, one would say, “I want to report a ____” and go on to explain the /outcome/ of events to the operator.
drdeadringer 7y ago
I deeply feel both sides of this. * If I were receiving domestic violence and in fear of my life, how would I feel calling emergency services knowing my screams for help in one of my most vulnerable states in life would later be public? * If I suspected I could be vulnerable to domestic violence, how inspired might I be to make the same type of call once hearing another person's similar emergency call? Two sides of a coin to consider.

gwbas1c 7y ago

People call 911 in domestic abuse situations. Those should not be made public record. Doing so will give an abuser more leverage.