Good arguments Robert but it brings up another point.
PUBLIC - By the term the public, is meant the whole body politic, or all the citizens of the state; sometimes it signifies the inhabitants of a particular place; as, the New York public. From the Lectric Law Library http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/p199.htm
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Making the American Public Records available over the internet makes those records available to anyone, anwhere, for any purpose. From the real property records terrorists are able to easily locate high pressure gas lines, electrical substations, chemical plants and many other known targets of convenience including the personal information of our leaders and their families.
The nineteen 911 terrorists were found to have over 50 drivers licenses from several states taken from stolen identities.
Your scenario of giving every Citizen of Texas a complete copy of the public record makes my point. First they would be the citizens of Texas and not the citizens the world. Second the fact they would have to flip through all the records is insures the practical obscurity that has protected American Citizens from unwarranted and casual examination of their records until the digital record was released worldwide through the internet.
Can you show me anywhere USA today has ever published the social security numbers, dates of birth, or home addresses of anyone? Yes they could under the laws but as a responsible news agency they don't.
Acces over the internet is only made possible by the digitization and mass transfer of the digitized public records from the public trust to private companies with their own purposes. Aggredization of the private records of American citizens is only made efficient when the records are digitized. Can you show me any instance where any company anywhere ever demanded all the paper public records contained in the real property records of a county. It just wasn't practical with paper records. But you will find these bulk requests for the bulk digital public record almost anywhere the county has digitized those records.
All over the country legislators are trying to deal with this problem. Most often they put bandaids on the hemorrhaging of the public record by pulling back affected records of certain groups such as police offiicers, elected and appointed officials, leaving the rest of us exposed. Or they make confidential entire subsections of previously open records such as the DMV records in California after Rebecca Shaefer was killed.
The digitization and bulk release of the public record and easy access worldwide threatens not only the individuals whose private information is contained in the records. It threatens the accuracy of the public records themselves as legislators try to deal with the problem by creating more and more exclusions.
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