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Do you have a personal stake or underlying viewpoint Yes. I work in a directly advisory position with various municipalities across the united States implement

by dvtrn 7y ago

Do you have a personal stake or underlying viewpoint Yes. I work in a directly advisory position with various municipalities across the united States implementing online open records systems of engagement, among other systems of public accountability and answer these types of questions every day. I had been intending to avoid appealing to job titles in discussing the matter but this is my profession and the question of legal access and barriers to access weighed against public interest is a topic that happens in every meeting I sit in.

ghaff 7y ago
Let me just suggest that you may be too narrowly focused on the legal status of the information. This is indeed important. But, as I and others have noted and given examples of, as a practical matter there's a big difference between information that anyone in the world can mass download to a computer and information that requires someone to show up in person at a clerk's office and pay for a paper copy.
- dvtrn 7y ago
  Let me just suggest that you may be too narrowly focused on the legal status of the information. When we're ostensibly talking about records that were made public by law, I think that focus is 100% warranted.
  - ambicapter 7y ago
    legality != morality, and this comment chain seems to be more focused on the moral aspects of privacy rather than the legal ones.
    - dvtrn 7y ago
      this comment chain seems to be more focused on the moral aspects of privacy rather than the legal ones. Sure. Fair. Valid. Except it's really more nuanced than just saying "legality != morality", especially when the rubber meets the road, and when it comes time to actually implementing systems of recording (and potentially disseminating) the public's interaction with their local jurisdictions and municipalities, and I think those nuances get lost when sitting on the periphery of installing policy and reading about statecraft compared to being inside, operating the levers and pulleys and-as the phrase goes-"watching the sausage get made".. That's why I'm being so willing to challenge some of the notions shared here today: I'm trying to be the voice of the insider and expose some of the reasons why certain things may be the way they are with regards to public data and open records. You're right legal does not necessarily mean moral, but when it's time for measurable outcomes and results of human actions, and interactions between citizens and their local governments the legal framework does a much better job of delivering those outcomes and results on a consistent basis than most others, and is the framework we use of keeping the operators and participants equally consistently accountable (most of the time, anyway). The focus, again, I say is warranted.
      - nitrogen 7y ago
        There are definitely many public records that should be as widely available as possible, so good work helping municipalities with those. I don't think people are saying that all searchable records are problematic. They are saying that some uses and some specific types of records are problematic -- those that do more harm than good. As an example, if hypothetically I were a victim of some embarrassing emergency, I wouldn't mind being part of anonymous aggregated statistics, but I definitely would object to anybody but myself and essential personnel having open access to the 911 recording, and I definitely wouldn't want my employer or neighbors to know any details or anything linking me to them without my permission or a substantiated court order, released under seal.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    >We're ostensibly talking about records that were made public by law so I think that focus is 100% warranted. One last comment. Yes. But I'd argue (and I imagine you agree) that many of the tradeoffs considered when those laws were passed reflect, among other things, that "public record" didn't originally often equate to big publicly accessible database.
    - wool_gather 7y ago
      In addition to this, laws can and should be changed, if we have a discussion about whether they're fulfilling their purpose -- like in this thread -- and realize that they're not.

by dvtrn 7y ago

ghaff 7y ago

Let me just suggest that you may be too narrowly focused on the legal status of the information. This is indeed important. But, as I and others have noted and given examples of, as a practical matter there's a big difference between information that anyone in the world can mass download to a computer and information that requires someone to show up in person at a clerk's office and pay for a paper copy.

dvtrn 7y ago
Let me just suggest that you may be too narrowly focused on the legal status of the information. When we're ostensibly talking about records that were made public by law, I think that focus is 100% warranted.
- ambicapter 7y ago
  legality != morality, and this comment chain seems to be more focused on the moral aspects of privacy rather than the legal ones.
  - dvtrn 7y ago
    this comment chain seems to be more focused on the moral aspects of privacy rather than the legal ones. Sure. Fair. Valid. Except it's really more nuanced than just saying "legality != morality", especially when the rubber meets the road, and when it comes time to actually implementing systems of recording (and potentially disseminating) the public's interaction with their local jurisdictions and municipalities, and I think those nuances get lost when sitting on the periphery of installing policy and reading about statecraft compared to being inside, operating the levers and pulleys and-as the phrase goes-"watching the sausage get made".. That's why I'm being so willing to challenge some of the notions shared here today: I'm trying to be the voice of the insider and expose some of the reasons why certain things may be the way they are with regards to public data and open records. You're right legal does not necessarily mean moral, but when it's time for measurable outcomes and results of human actions, and interactions between citizens and their local governments the legal framework does a much better job of delivering those outcomes and results on a consistent basis than most others, and is the framework we use of keeping the operators and participants equally consistently accountable (most of the time, anyway). The focus, again, I say is warranted.
    - nitrogen 7y ago
      There are definitely many public records that should be as widely available as possible, so good work helping municipalities with those. I don't think people are saying that all searchable records are problematic. They are saying that some uses and some specific types of records are problematic -- those that do more harm than good. As an example, if hypothetically I were a victim of some embarrassing emergency, I wouldn't mind being part of anonymous aggregated statistics, but I definitely would object to anybody but myself and essential personnel having open access to the 911 recording, and I definitely wouldn't want my employer or neighbors to know any details or anything linking me to them without my permission or a substantiated court order, released under seal.
- ghaff 7y ago
  >We're ostensibly talking about records that were made public by law so I think that focus is 100% warranted. One last comment. Yes. But I'd argue (and I imagine you agree) that many of the tradeoffs considered when those laws were passed reflect, among other things, that "public record" didn't originally often equate to big publicly accessible database.
  - wool_gather 7y ago
    In addition to this, laws can and should be changed, if we have a discussion about whether they're fulfilling their purpose -- like in this thread -- and realize that they're not.