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I have very mixed thoughts on this. I guess if the information is public to begin with I don't have a problem making it more accessible. But should the informat

I have very mixed thoughts on this. I guess if the information is public to begin with I don't have a problem making it more accessible. But should the information even be public, especially with all the mistakes that plague the data? I'll probably be thinking about this for the rest of the day. What's everyone else think?

jrockway 18y ago
I think this is interesting. I looked for myself, and the information is just plain wrong. (I have no criminal record, but I clicked a link to some affiliate site that gives you general information.) I learned something new -- getting wrong information is more comforting to me than getting no information. If someone decides they want to kill me for disagreeing with their Hacker News post, they will look up "my" address, be excited that they found me, and then go to the wrong city to do the deed. If there was no information, they would keep looking until they found something, but this false positive should satisfy their curiosity and they will stop digging deeper. (Of course, if someone really wanted to kill me, they should look at my public Dopplr profile instead :P) But should the information even be public, especially with all the mistakes that plague the data? The legal system provides recourse for publishing false information. If someone turns you down for a job because of the false criminal record, I'm sure your lawyer can help you out. In most cases, though, the information is probably correct, so there is no point in hiding it. This is sort of like the argument against Google Street View -- "what if someone sees me walking out of a sex shop." I say, well... eventually society will realize that people buy stuff at sex shops, and we can stop worrying about what other people think. It will help society evolve. I think the same is true with criminal records. If everyone sees how prevalent marijuana use is, eventually society will stop demonizing it. In the case of other crimes, perhaps you can explain yourself out of the shame. Either way, I think this will hurt individuals in the short run and help society as a whole in the long run. (That probably means it will be made illegal in another week or so. Call me cynical :P)
- time_management 18y ago
  I think the same is true with criminal records. If everyone sees how prevalent marijuana use is, eventually society will stop demonizing it. In the case of other crimes, perhaps you can explain yourself out of the shame. This sort of assertion I tend to doubt. Many of the people who seek to demonize and preserve the criminal status of marijuana have, in fact, used it, although they defend their behavior with pithy excuses like "I was young and dumb" or "it was the '60s; it was different back then". Society doesn't demonize the rare vices, unless they are dangerous to innocent people, e.g. pedophilia, so much as it lunges for the common ones. What do the morals police stand to gain from crusading against, say, a blue-and-yellow-striped-dress fetish? Virtually no one has such a fetish, so it gives them no power base. Premarital sex, on the other hand... You might hope that people with rigid moral stances might soften them when they discover good people who live differently, but the fact is that a lot of these people are more inclined to turn against old friends than to revise their opinions. The issue with vice voyeurism is, moreover, not one of acceptance so much as privacy and professionalism. Pretty much everyone accepts that sex is a part of normal life, but no one would want to have his/her sexual history available on the Internet, nor come up at a place of work.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]

jrockway 18y ago

I think this is interesting. I looked for myself, and the information is just plain wrong. (I have no criminal record, but I clicked a link to some affiliate site that gives you general information.) I learned something new -- getting wrong information is more comforting to me than getting no information. If someone decides they want to kill me for disagreeing with their Hacker News post, they will look up "my" address, be excited that they found me, and then go to the wrong city to do the deed. If there was no information, they would keep looking until they found something, but this false positive should satisfy their curiosity and they will stop digging deeper. (Of course, if someone really wanted to kill me, they should look at my public Dopplr profile instead :P) But should the information even be public, especially with all the mistakes that plague the data? The legal system provides recourse for publishing false information. If someone turns you down for a job because of the false criminal record, I'm sure your lawyer can help you out. In most cases, though, the information is probably correct, so there is no point in hiding it. This is sort of like the argument against Google Street View -- "what if someone sees me walking out of a sex shop." I say, well... eventually society will realize that people buy stuff at sex shops, and we can stop worrying about what other people think. It will help society evolve. I think the same is true with criminal records. If everyone sees how prevalent marijuana use is, eventually society will stop demonizing it. In the case of other crimes, perhaps you can explain yourself out of the shame. Either way, I think this will hurt individuals in the short run and help society as a whole in the long run. (That probably means it will be made illegal in another week or so. Call me cynical :P)

time_management 18y ago
I think the same is true with criminal records. If everyone sees how prevalent marijuana use is, eventually society will stop demonizing it. In the case of other crimes, perhaps you can explain yourself out of the shame. This sort of assertion I tend to doubt. Many of the people who seek to demonize and preserve the criminal status of marijuana have, in fact, used it, although they defend their behavior with pithy excuses like "I was young and dumb" or "it was the '60s; it was different back then". Society doesn't demonize the rare vices, unless they are dangerous to innocent people, e.g. pedophilia, so much as it lunges for the common ones. What do the morals police stand to gain from crusading against, say, a blue-and-yellow-striped-dress fetish? Virtually no one has such a fetish, so it gives them no power base. Premarital sex, on the other hand... You might hope that people with rigid moral stances might soften them when they discover good people who live differently, but the fact is that a lot of these people are more inclined to turn against old friends than to revise their opinions. The issue with vice voyeurism is, moreover, not one of acceptance so much as privacy and professionalism. Pretty much everyone accepts that sex is a part of normal life, but no one would want to have his/her sexual history available on the Internet, nor come up at a place of work.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]