Canadian Privacy Czar Wants To Anonymize Court Records On the Web 340
An anonymous reader writes "The web is evil and must be stopped — because it makes public information too public. So says Canada's Privacy Commissioner. She wants to 'anonymize' court records by substituting initials for names.
The Toronto Star quotes Jennifer Stodddart as saying 'The open court rule, which is extremely historically important, has now become distorted by the effect of massive search engines... Court decisions and other related documents, which contain all sorts of personal information, are now searchable worldwide, which was never intended when openness rules were devised.'
All Stoddart's proposal would do is erect a minor barrier for the techno unsaavy. Researchers, reporters, geeks, and most teenagers would still be able to figure out who's who.
Stoddart seems to believe only in an abstract notion of freedom and access — but only as long as not too many people use it and no one suffers. She cites the case of someone who is upset at reading the divorce case of her parents.
Is Stoddart a danger or a menace? Or just clueless?"
Censor the many for the good of a few (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, here's something: don't read it!
"Wow, reading about the war between Georgia and Russia, the parliamentary fire in Eqypt, and bombings all over the world is really depressing. If only there was a law against printing all that uncomfortable stuff, my life would be a lot better!"
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Uhm, Hyperbole? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm missing something, but this summary really sounds like a bunch of hyperbole. Who cares if the personal data is anonymized? Sure, security through obscurity doesn't work, but it does filter out a lot of noise anyways, and in the end, names aren't whats important in reviewing cases, it's the decision and the reasoning behind the decision that matters.
But the way this summary was written, you'd think the end of democracy is near.
Then you end it with "Is Stoddart a danger or a menace? Or just clueless?"?
Is this honestly how a debate will go these days? It's bad enough that canadian politicians bicker like little children, we don't need the high school like ultimatums or multi-anti-your-opinion-choice questions from the populace to throw into the mix.
Sounds reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds perfectly reasonable. Anybody with an interest can still easily find all needed information, while preventing a kind of panopticon of every single aspect of people's lives and pasts to be laid out like a frog on a dissecting table.
Privacy is not binary; it is a sliding scale. This seems to hit a pretty good balance.
History (Score:3, Insightful)
Look too hard, and you might not like what you see (Score:5, Insightful)
Upon thinking about the issue some more, this reminds me of the case of Daryl Clark. He was arrested for masturbating in his own house, but he was visible to the neighbours. This was a case which went before the Canadian Supreme Court, but none of that is important.
What is important is the neighbours watched him for 10 to 15 minutes at times using binoculars and a telescope before deciding they don't like what they see and calling the police.
I don't know about you, but I don't have malware on my computer popping up divorce cases on screen. I don't get spams saying "Enl4rge your PEN!S, 4nd h3re's some d1v0rce pap3rs t00!" At some point this lady either decided she was going to look for the papers, or if turned up on Google, decided she was going to read the papers. She didn't like what she saw, and now is trying to change the world (for the worse) to suit her.
Ironically, the court papers in the Daryl Clark case name the complainant only as "Mrs. S."
False choice (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither. If I was ever falsely accused and taken to court for something really unsavoury then having my name come up against the charges would not be such a good thing.
Is it the records of the court case itself or the names of the people involved that is the important thing here? I'd say the former, in which case anonymising the names of those involved seems like quite a reasonable thing to do.
Anonymising of email addresses is done all the time on publicly archived mailing lists and I don't hear an outcry about that.
Oh, the Irony... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see anything wrong with it-- this is no different than case histories involving people listed as 'Mr. F---' and the like.
Re:Sounds reasonable (Score:3, Insightful)
How can any reasonable person have an expectation of privacy when their words are on the public record?
It's the public record.. it's open to the public..
Re:The Challenge of Privacy in the Information Age (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that court rooms are generally open access, I don't see how bottling the information up later on is likely to be a good idea.
Hiding court records except on a case by case basis when absolutely necessary is a menace to society.
One of the major points of a free society is the openness of courts. The reason is that it's a lot harder to engage in shenanigans if you know that the public has the ability to attend the proceedings or view the record.
Degree easy access is not a wishy-washy concept. (Score:5, Insightful)
Open but not "lying in the open" access to information is an important concept. In the United States, many privacy-related things are left lying in the open - who's in prison [168.51.178.33], who's been arrested, the declared value of your home with the municipality. These can all be viewed online. In Canada, these are generally considered public information as well, but you can't access them that easily. They're not in a public database on the web. You have to write a letter or fill out a form and mail it in.
Although information in court records is considered public, it has in every practical sense stayed obscure until fairly recently, because few people besides reporters would wander into a courthouse basement to read it, Stoddart said.
There is a difference between in a basement in the public archives and online. When you make it easier to access a person's private information, you're more likely to have people doing look-ups for trivial/unjustifiable reasons. An employer doing a search on Google for an employee's name now might find a court appearance of the employee from several years ago for drug possession. The employee may have been acquitted, but that's still going to tarnish the employer's reputation of the employee. That's important, especially when discriminating based on arrest or court appearance record is illegal in Canada [ohrc.on.ca].
The Canadian legal system generally recognizes that access to such information in certain cases is extremely important. It is also recognized that publishing such information online in an easily accessible form could cause a lot of harm to a person's right to privacy. If it's important enough you need to know, it should be important enough for you to haul your butt to the local archives or paying the fee to have a copy mailed to you.
I'm sure to many Americans it would seem a bit nutty, the idea of making it "sorta" hard to access public personal information, but it fits in well with previous thought on privacy in Canada.
Re:Sounds reasonable (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree that the rise of the internet and assorted datamining tech has markedly changed the practical implications of open access records, and not necessarily for the best; but this is a lousy solution. Throwing up petty roadblocks of this sort will hit the unsavvy individual hardest, the powerful data broker hardly at all, and others somewhere in between. Not a good outcome.
Oh, come on (Score:3, Insightful)
Yet another example of sensationalism on Slashdot. Ooh, the GOVERNMENT (!) wants to partially anonymize names of people in court cases online! This obviously is an invasion of our civil rights as citizens, even though we can still go to the court ourselves and get the full, un-"censored" names.
It's nice to see people take on the challenges the 'net poses to privacy without resorting to proposing heavy-handed regulation or whatnot. But, really, this story is unfortunately is just another one of Slashdot's anti-government circle-jerks.
Good for Canada (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm just surprised they manage to have a Privacy Czar. With the U.S.A. about to grant telecom immunity for illegally granting surveillance to the gov't (who asked for it illegally), and the U.K. about to start monitoring EVERY electronic communication, I'm glad there's a country left that values privacy. Maybe I'll move there if America keeps letting me down.
Re:Sounds reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
How can any reasonable person have an expectation of privacy when their words are on the public record?
The "expectation of privacy" argument only holds water if you're an exhibitionist. Very few of the parties involved in legal proceedings are there because they want to air the details of their lives in public.
It's important that court records be public in order that the legal system be transparent as possible. At one time, that meant that if someone was interested enough to go down to the courthouse and spend days wading through records, they could find out more about you than you might want them to know. With records online and searchable, however, it's a whole new ball game.
Would you want your boss to see the ugly details of your divorce, for example? It's likely that (s)he could, if (s)he routinely googled everyone working for him/her. The ease with which this information can be obtained makes it a virtual blacklist. What if you were fired as the result of allegations - true or not - made by your ex? What if you could never get a decent job again because those allegations were always popping up during the screening process every time you applied for one? There are serious ramifications to the destruction of privacy, even though you may have to become a victim of them yourself before you'll realize it.
Re:Uhm, Hyperbole? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of people care, because a lot of the data that's posted is not necessarily what you'd imagine.
In a typical divorce case, for example, full financial disclosure is made by all parties, in some cases down to detailed records of credit card expenditures. Even records of things like psychological evaluations might be included in the record.
This is especially difficult because it can place innocent people between a rock and a hard place. You might be sued by someone with no reasonable case, but in order to put up a practical defense, you might be forced to expose all sorts of otherwise private information. Or, you may just want to get a divorce, and in order to do so be required to present all sorts of detailed financial and other types of data.
Ordinarily, (i.e., before posting court data on the internet) it was difficult to obtain this information- it was generally expensive ($1/pg, or so) and time consuming (one had to go down to the court clerk). Slashdotters may not care that this is merely security by obscurity, and it is. But it does provide an effective deterrent for the court equivalent of 'script kiddies'- individuals who troll court records for data they think is worthy of blackmail or other intimidation. It's simply too expensive and impractical for them to do their business, while individuals who really do need that information, have it open to them.
I believe it was, in fact, the Canadian Supreme Court which once said that 'must be available' does not mean 'we have to give it to you on a silver platter with a martini to your taste'.
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Re:And if you're innocent? (Score:3, Insightful)
The court record would say so.
So the court record would say that an innocent is scheduled to be on trial?
Re:Uhm, Hyperbole? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I don't think the traditional method of retrieving court information can be classified as security through obscurity. It is security through cost. Not so much cost in money but in time.
Court records are open because it is assumed that anyone willing to go through the time and effort required to get a copy probably has a pretty good reason to want to see it. Historically, few people have gone t the trouble of looking up random court records on the off chance that it might turn out to be interesting. The likely payoff is so far below the effort needed that there has always been a better way to spend the time.
So, records for a particular case? No problem. Large swaths of random records? Not worth it.
Re:The Challenge of Privacy in the Information Age (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that court rooms are generally open access, I don't see how bottling the information up later on is likely to be a good idea.
Any /. reader should comprehend the difference between some information being available by traditional means, and that same information being available worldwide via web to every data miner.
Tell me, you're not even slightly worried about criminal organizations and foreign intelligence agencies (domestic "homeland security" types probably have full access anyway) and even tabloid newspapers doing data mining court records to find "interesting" potential victims, targets and recruits?
Full online access does create a problem. Many here seem to argue that openness of information is so valuable that abuse, even criminal use should be made easy. I disagree strongly. I feel a person should have full control over what personally identifiable information about him is internationally available in the internet. For example any court text available online should not have any names in it (names replaced by numbers, for example). The full text should only be available in person, or via snail mail for a cost of "shipping and handling".
Stodddart is not clueless. (Score:1, Insightful)
Jennifer Stodddart is not clueless, she has been a very good privacy commissioner and her point here is intelligent. There is a big difference between having your information available to the public and having it all be easily searchable. Submitter needs to get a clue.
Re:Look too hard, and you might not like what you (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually I think it is a good step forward. The process is what should be transparent, not necessarily the ID's of the people involved. The fact remains is that the presumption of innocence should technically take precedence because some of these cases that get reported in the media end up being false accusations and what not. Therefore, keeping the names of the people involved anonymized UNTIL there is a conviction. After all if you want proof a false accusation can ruin someone's life in this modern era just imagine what would happen if you got accused of child molesting or child porn... Even if you are found innocent (which is not very likely since its an emotionally charged issue and people are more likely to apply guilty until proven innocent in their mental process), your name is out there, attached to such a case so you'll probably never get a job again, you'd likely be the target of vigilantes and since you're arrest in the police database you can expect there to be a lot of law enforcement harassment not to mention their records may still list you as a sex offender regardless of the court findings. People have been falsely accused and gone on to commit suicide as a result.
Re:Look too hard, and you might not like what you (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what is your point? Surely, the images of me doing various things at home are theoretically available to my neighbor with good binoculars, who happens to be watching at the right time. Does that mean that it should be also made available to two billion of my neighbors on Internet? If so, is it too much for me to ask that at least I am identified by initials rather than full name?
Re:And if you're innocent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Aren't *all* people scheduled to be on trial 'innocent'...as in 'innocent until proven guilty'? ...or should that be 'assumed to be innocent until proven guilty'?
I think the point is that the phrase 'innocent until proven guilty' has little meaning to the general public. They tend to assume that "there's no smoke without fire", if they don't just plain assume the person is guilty.
Respectful debate is worthwhile (Score:5, Insightful)
You are right. A reasonable and informed person (the privacy commissioner) has raised some important issues. She should have the respect she deserves and don't assume that she is a danger, menace or clueless. The summary is way too inflammatory and emotive. The OP wrongly and somewhat offensively implies that this is something to do with freedom of speech or suppression of information. The OP should learn to assume that people in her position are as smart and as altruistic as him or herself.
In fact, she clearly understands and values free speech and open justice or she would have proposed a major barrier that can't easily be worked around. The idea behind the solution she has proposed (make stuff hard to find unless people go looking) is not dangerous, not menacing, and certainly not clueless.
It probably isn't the best solution, because she is not a technical person, and maybe she has a professional bias towards information containment. So if people feel strongly about it, they should demonstrate respect for her and her principles, even if they don't agree that there's a problem, or like the solution.
Despite my UID and this post, I am not new here! (Because of my UID I am not New Here.)
Re:Uhm, Hyperbole? (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that often, only one of the parties involved starts an action and the other party is left with basically conceding everything to the party starting the action or airing their dirty laundry.
The Court should not be a party to what is, at its most basic, extortion; and that's not a problem you can just 'fix' in any other way.
This is the real problem, although I can see why it would pain the average slashdotter to admit it. Free and open is not always the best way to run a society.
Moreover, as I said earlier, just because the Court is obligated to be open in its dealings does not mean it has to go out of its way to make them so. It can, and does, impose reasonable restrictions on even the matters of public record.
Re:The Challenge of Privacy in the Information Age (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider also the policies of most web forums, Wikipedia, etc. that posting someone's phone number constitutes harassment, even though the phone number is in the phone book. The people who institute those policies are not idiots, they simply understand there is a difference between theoretical equivalence and being the same thing in practice.
Re:Uhm, Hyperbole? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Czar ..... (Score:1, Insightful)
And what about the victims? (Score:5, Insightful)
I see a lot of comments in this thread around the lines of "Well if you didn't want your name on a judgment, you shouldn't have done anything illegal". While this is a quesionable argument, it seems the slashdot crowd has not spent a significant amount of time looking at the crap some judges put in judgments.
I've been personally involved with that kind of work (putting legal decisions online) and some of the stuff, especially in child abuse or sexual assault cases is just heart churning.
Now think about how you'd feel as a teenager if whenever someone googles your name, they find out about what your uncle did to you when you were 6.
Yes, court decisions should be public. Yes, in principle names should remain in there. But in some cases, it is really not appropriate. Note that if you really want to find out the info, you can always request it from the clerk of that tribunal.
We have gone a long way from the days where the decisions were locked behind expensive proprietary databases, or dusty books. This have changed the effects of the principle of public availability of the law. Let's not go backward and realize that while the law needs to be public, associating some of the sordid details with an individual is not conducive to either the victim healing or the criminal being eventually rehabilitated. Its hard enough getting your life together with a criminal file when you have doe your time, making it even harder makes the whole concept of the sentencing futile.
BTW, there has been a big effort in educating judges in thinking about they decisions being available to a larger clerk than the legal scholars.
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Re:The Challenge of Privacy in the Information Age (Score:3, Insightful)
By that reasoning, you should hire people found guilty, since you seem to assume courts are by default wrong.
No he just knows that a "not guilty" verdict from a court means "not proven guilty" not "proven not guilty".
Re:And if you're innocent? (Score:4, Insightful)
The readers here are ignoring three issues (Score:4, Insightful)
Issue 1) The privacy commissioner is talking about what the state does not what private individuals do. While this is a canadian story, I think it is completely reasonable for a court system to prevent google indexing(spider.txt??) of local court records to protect some measure of privacy of individuals. There are already publicly available properly indexed databases for criminal searches such as the NCIC in the US.
If a party to a trial(other than the state) wants to publicize his or her case that is also reasonable.
2) The right to privacy does not mean the same as a gag order. In a civil suit either party can publicize the case, Even in a Juvenile case criminal case a defendant can tell anyone they want.
3) The right to privacy is a right just like freedom of speech is a right.
Re:Uhm, Hyperbole? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a bit like spam: if email were $.50 a pop,
No one would use it.
Purely civil matters need not be public. (Score:4, Insightful)
In criminal matters, it's the government versus the accused, and liberty demands that such trials take place in public. But in a purely civil matter, the government is just an adjudicator -- the conflict is between two private people or institutions. Why SHOULD the public have access to divorce proceedings? The government has only a neutral role.
Re:Look too hard, and you might not like what you (Score:3, Insightful)
know nothing about God. I also don't know anyone who knows anything about God. When no one knows anything about some entity, and no one can propose a way to get any verifiable knowledge about it, a reasonable conclusion is that the entity does not exist in reality.
That logic does not follow at all. You know nothing about the weather on planets around suns other than ours, and there is no way to get it. But it doesn't mean weather on other planets doesn't exist.
The same can be said about what is in my pocket. Neither you nor anyone you know can know anything about what is in my pocket, or in fact if I even have a pocket. But you cannot reasonably conclude that what may or may not be in my pocket doesn't exist.