Byrne’s piece on public records brought up several things for me. First, it reminded me I have varied experience helping patrons access public records in my job at a public library. Several times a patron has tried to find an old classmate or teacher, and we have usually had limited success at locating them. The web page usually wants to start charging them to view personal details. I have never found all that info he was describing, their marriage certificates and so on. I feel good if I can pull up a phone number that isn’t disconnected!
I also have a concern about public records visibility, because I don’t think many are aware of how limited their scope is. For example, court records and offender registries do not capture all people who have ever committed such crimes, instead they are just the ones that have been caught, prosecuted and convicted. Byrne mentions how convicted criminals have lost some of their privacy rights (3). It is important to realize that the people convicted of crimes in the US are much more likely to be poor and minorities. So when we start to CCAP all future employees, and exclude those that have felony convictions, for instance, let’s not fool ourselves that we are now left with a pool of people who have never committed a felony. Nope, it simply means we are left with a group of people, some which never have committed felonies, but others that have but have never been caught or got their charges dropped. The problem is many people don’t realize this or don’t care. This is one reason why it’s so hard for convicted felons to get back on their feet’ they keep getting excluded from being put in to housing and getting hired from jobs because the people making the decisions think they are doing something to keep their community safe. They need to realize there is plenty of people who have committed crimes who just never been caught. I don’t know what the total solution is to this problem, but I would definitely like to see awareness raised on this issue. As a librarian, I would have no problem sharing this with patrons. It’s just another example of how limited information we can get using the web and/or public records. They do not tell the whole story.
I disagree with Byrne when he says convicted criminals are the ones ultimately responsible for having their information public (3). I suppose he means that in breaking the law, they forfeited those rights. As above, I fear this is a very narrow view. There are some people who have been wrongly convicted. And many who are never convicted because of wealth, status, race or luck- how does he reconcile this?
Byrne’s article demonstrates that there is a lot of personal information about us “out there”. It also shows how disorganized our country’s approach is to protecting personal information. I got nervous when I read about the type of redaction that only happens if individuals request it be done. I believe this is putting too much of the burden on the individual. As Byrne listed all the things that may be accessed about us, from home address to social security number, I kept thinking that only certain people will know that this information is out there and have the time and money to track it down. It is another example to me of the gulf between those who know how to navigate the information superhighway and those who don’t.
The two articles addressing informed consent and using our body parts also made it clear that even the people donating their stem cells, organs, etc often don’t understand exactly what they are used for. Streiffer’s article in particular drilled this point home, by pointing out how confusing, misleading and even downright untruthful the consent forms for stem cells can be. As librarians, we can point out ambiguous wording to both our patrons and those writing things like consent forms. Reading these articles is important too because they should remind us that there are many forms and documents that patrons will be accessing that they don’t completely understand or are worded unclearly. By us being aware of that, we will be better able to help our patrons make good decisions.
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