It is the states that are driving this and maybe the feds are driving them. But the idea of letting the legislators know just how much about themselves is going to be available is an excellent one. Nothing motivates a politician to legislate than self-preservation.

I think the misuse is already there it just isn't known to the public yet. There are several suits already across the country. The problem with public information isn't the information but the access. In the past the public information was somewhat protected by what the lawyers are calling "practical obscurity". In order to misuse it you had to know how to find it and had to expose yourself to the authorities when you dug it out. By offering not only the indexes but the documents themselves onto the internet it opens the door to anonymous wholesale misuse by anyone anwhere in the world. It is a very dangerous thing.

There is a case in California that shows how the legislature will most likely react to the abuses of the public information. License information used to be public information until a careless investigator out there used the state database to locate a young woman for his client. He called his client and gave him her home address over the phone. The next morning she was found dead. The careless investigator had given the address to her killer. She was a young actress who had never met her killer. The investigator lost his license and the killer was convicted but none of this helped the young woman.

The legislature reacted by closing off the public database of California license holders. Other states reacted with similar laws.

You may remember when birth certificates were public record. It really wasn't that long ago. But the birth certificates were used by criminals seeking a new identity. They searched through the death records until they found someone who died you that was about their own age. Then they cross referenced the birth records. All that was left to do was go to the county clerk to get a copy of the birth certificate and they had the beginnings of a new identity. Now birth records are no longer publicly available.