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Proposed Search Fee Threatens Access to Public Court Records | 179 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Proposed Search Fee Threatens Access to Public Court Records
Authored by: Wol on Saturday, March 16 2013 @ 07:45 AM EDT
From a European perspective, it's not the cost that matters, it's the hassle
factor.

If I have to go to the council offices to check the electoral roll, I'm not
going to be able to do many checks, even if they're free. If I can get hold of
the roll via a computer, my ability to trawl the data got exponentially easier.

THAT is the beef with privacy - it's not that data access has been liberalised,
it's that it's a lot easier to create and trawl LARGE databases.

And yes, I know it's a pain for us trying to get hold of court records if we're
interested in a case, but the worry is that by making it *easy* for us, we make
it *easy* for the bad guys. And by reducing the cost per access, we increase the
cost-effectiveness for the fraudsters and other bad guys.

My feeling is - to keep this cost-effectiveness in place - access should be free
in person, with a fee over the internet. Just because the data CAN be made
available for free in a huge database doesn't mean it SHOULD.

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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