Heath Haussamen
The New Mexico Supreme Court recently took steps to address privacy concerns related to information contained in court records. It’s considering additional steps that would reduce what information is available online. While some of the steps are logical, others are and would be troubling moves toward limiting the public’s access to information it has a right and need to know.
As of July 1, court documents filed by prosecutors are only available to the public with certain information redacted: all but the last four digits of social security numbers, taxpayer ID numbers, financial account numbers and driver’s license numbers, and all but the year of a person’s date of birth.
It’s the last that I find troubling. As a former crime and courts reporter, I can tell you that being able to look up a person using their name and date of birth is an invaluable way to find a person’s past criminal record or other court information.
For example, I used it to determine whether it was a public official or someone else who had been arrested for DWI. And when a man who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was off his medication ended up killing someone, I was able, armed with his date of birth, to find a history of incidents that helped paint a clearer picture of how he got to the point that he led police on a high-speed chase through Las Cruces and ran over and killed a man crossing the street.
When the court Web site, nmcourts.com, included full dates of birth, it was a great tool for getting information from a source other than law enforcement.
Now, if you search for cases on the court Web site, you’ll find years of birth only. That’s not enough information to ensure the identity of a person. The change will, I assume unintentionally, push reporters to become cozier with district attorneys in an attempt to get that information out of them, so it will limit journalistic independence.
The other numbers that are being partially redacted in court documents aren’t necessary to identify a person (with the exception of the last four digits of social security numbers) and aren’t as easy to obtain, so redacting them from public records to help prevent identity theft makes sense. But a person’s date of birth is easy to find. For purposes of identity theft, if someone wants your date of birth, they’re going to get it. So the benefit of redacting days and months of birth on the court Web site and in documents is outweighed by the public interest in accurate reporting and journalistic independence, in my view.
To top it off, I know people who have used the court Web site to find information about family members who have been arrested. Without full dates of birth, those whose family members have common names will have a more difficult time doing that.
Even more troubling
The Supreme Court is considering another change I find even more troubling. Its Judicial Information Systems Council is recommending that criminal cases in which defendants are not convicted of a crime be permanently removed from the court Web site, even though files from all cases – not just those that result in convictions – are public records that must be maintained by the court in which they were filed.
From the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government:
“Even though they were acquitted of the crime, or the charges were dropped for lack of evidence, the convenience of the public courts website makes it difficult for them to get a job or housing – type in their name, and all the charges appear. The advisory committee figures that if the information is harder to access, then it won’t cause as many problems for defendants.
“FOG is sympathetic, but we believe there are better ways to address employment and housing discrimination than to cut off online access to a huge amount of public court information. It’s 2010, and public information belongs online. Convenient public access to information facilitates oversight of what your elected sheriffs, prosecutors and judges are doing.”
Agreed. Employment and housing discrimination is wrong, but making it more difficult to access public information isn’t the way to combat it. Public information belongs online. It helps journalists conduct research and provide more accurate news reports. It helps the public scrutinize the actions of its public officials.
It even helps political candidates scrutinize each others’ records. In the gubernatorial race, the state Democratic Party and Democratic candidate Diane Denish have used the court Web site to conduct research into the record of Republican Susana Martinez, Doña Ana County’s district attorney.
Having such information online helps people keep track of family members’ court cases. It helps victims keep track of stalkers, abusers, etc.
The New Mexico courts Web site is the only central database of court case information in New Mexico that’s publicly accessible. Removing vast numbers of cases from this database means there won’t be any single place for people to conduct research. If information about cases that didn’t lead to convictions is removed from the Web site, people would have to travel to every court in the state if they wanted to ensure their research was comprehensive. In the 21st Century, that would be a ridiculously prohibitive limiting of access to public information.
The Supreme Court should put full dates of birth back in court documents and online. And it should reject a proposal to remove cases that didn’t lead to convictions from the online database.