Access to Online Local Govt. Public Records: The Privacy Paradox

I really enjoyed this article. I agree with the author that local governments are doing a pretty good job protecting certain sensative information from falling into the wrong hands. In the case of Joe the Plummer. Yes, he was thrust into the spotlight without his concent, really, but why should he be able to hide his personal life from the media. I would not be ashamed of people knowing my past. I've never been arrested or anything but I am sure people could have some interesting things to say about me. I say to those people who want to know about me, "bring it." I am not ashamed of anything I've ever done or if I am, there is a reason behind it which can be explained. If celebrities, in our society can be outed so easily, why can't the average man? If Joe, the plummer needs to pay his taxes, then maybe he should do that instead of going to political rallies and speaking about the corruption of Govt. all while being a goddamn hippocrite. If poor Joe can be discredited, than maybe he should be. If Joe has issue, it should be taken up with those who thrust him into the spotlight unwittingly, the McCain people, not the media. The McCain people were the ones responsible for changing Joe's status to "political ploy." The media was just doing their job. I think that it is hippocritical of us, as citizens to expect for our government to be transparent, while at the same time preferring non-transparency for our own personal cases.

On the other hand, after reading a bit about the case of Rebecca Shaefer, I would like to state that I do feel that maybe certain items such as place of residency, SSN and other such personal information (certain authorship and instrumental mapping information other than NAME) should not be made so easily accessible to the general public although they may be available elsewhere. This private information should be redacted from public records no matter what the cost and persons should be aware of what they are disclosing when they state their place of residency online. For those parts of a persons record which need to be kept secret, like SSN, personal address or phone #, perhaps there could be some kind of password for the govt. employees who need to have access. A person would have to go through some sort of verification process to get to that information from the Govt. agency, even if they can easily obtain it elsewhere. In other words, I feel that if you are arrested for an impropriety, have a domestic record which needed to be handled by a govt. agency, such as a divorce or some sort of dispute over property of business, this information should be disclosed to whoever has access to it, either on paper or through the internet.
I think that one of the major issues that we are really speaking of here is that not all records should be public. There will have to be much more care when placing documents into a publicly accessible database that the public is blocked from retrieving such information and that those who leak this information are prosecuted. I do not believe that it is right to block or seal the entire record from public view although states like Wisconsin and Oklahoma have chosen to do this either altogether or on a case-by-case basis.
In those cases where a person needs to pay money and register to access a record, I feel that registration can be required but people should not have to pay because this limits the access to only people who CAN pay, which is wrong as was done in the State of Rhode Island. I don't believe that having to pay for access would limit data-mining anyway, since much more money can be made by mining the data on a site than it would take to access it. I do like those little boxes on webpages where you have to enter the numbers and letters to access a site. This does help with computer program bots who are set to data-mine but it will not stop humans doing the same thing.
The real issue here is whether or not Govt. laws concerning open-access to records that are financial and personal in nature should be treated with the same as open to anyone while personal non-govt. records remain mostly closed. I believe that they should be treated differently but I also think that one should be able to do research on an individual if needed but without having easy access to their ultra-personal information which could potentially reak havoc on their lives and reputations if gotten hold of by the wrong parties.
I must say that one of the reason why I think I feel so strongly about certain descriptive and criminal data being fully disclosed about individuals online is because of my background as an art historian. We would not know anything about certain artist like Frans Hals for instance if it were not for Dutch court records and the birth and death dates of his children or wife. This information needs to be kept accessable while also keeping certain information unaccessible except maybe by specific request on a case-by-case basis.

Body of Research and Informed Consent
I found the article "Informed Consent" to be very interesting. I have tended to let the whole stem cell debate pass me by. I used to live right next to a large corporation for stem cell research in K.C. called the Stowers Institute for Medical Research. One day I was walking to my apt. from my parked car on the street right outside of Stowers and was inundated by hand-scrawled signs of all sizes being held  by protestors of all ages protesting stem cell research as "murder";  I thought to myself, "oh, these are the people who make it necessary for my local Planned Parenthood to employ such stringent security practices. I also thought of the Fred Phelps people in Topeka being ridiculous and protesting a Tori Amos concert with signs which stated "god hates fags." In other words, I just felt that these people were whiney, uneducated troublemakers forcing their imposed morality on others and using their president, George W., to justify their outbursts.

After reading this article, I understand more fully the justification for reform in the areas where consent forms are needed. Although I may still disagree with the protestors, I do believe that people need to be better informed about what the donation of their cells could mean and the NAS guidelines seem a perfect pattern to follow when revising these forms, which obviously needs to be done. Now, I certainly wouldn't protest this outside Stowers but I do feel that writing an article in a respected journal is the perfect way to protest, which our author has most skillfully done.  Valuable research needs to be performed to find new cures for old diseases and I don't think that putting more restrictions on everything is the answer. I agree with the author that after we overhaul these forms of consent, there will be no reason to reconsider federal funding. Obviously, this article would not have been possible without the Freedom of Information Act enabling the author to recieve copies of the forms from the NIH.