Oklahoma legislation, HB 2903 - An Act relating to telephone records, prohibiting certain acts with telephone records without the authorization of the customer, has been signed into law, going into affect November 1, 2006. Procuring or receiving 10 or mo

The New Jersey Superior Court has determined that public access to court procedings and court records supercedes any agreement by the litigants to keep records confidential. The trial court judge claimed that opening the court records could injure the pa

The Third Circuit Court is hearing a case that will determine whether a portion of Delaware’s public records act is constitutional. Delaware is one of only 10 states, according to a New York Times article, that bars nonresidents from obtaining state

HR 4943, To prohibit fraudulent access to telephone records, which was expected to be approved by Congress, has been withdrawn from a House vote, perhaps in light of the recently revealed National Security Agency program collecting telephone activity info

Auto theft continues to decline but California regions top the list for the highest vehicle theft rates, according to the NAMIC article, Nationally, Auto Theft on Pace for Second Straight Year of Decline.

It wasn’t the best of times, but it was incrementally better than the worst. The Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing yesterday recapped prior discussions in the legislature a

Good news for public records advocates: California SB 1015, which would close the financial portion of a marriage dissolution court case and redact all personal identifiers has been withdrawn. The bill met with strong opposition. Women’s rights grou

The Arizona Senate has approved legislation that will add code enforement officers to the list of government employees whose names can be removed from the public records. The summary of HB 2220 lists the covered classifications. Authorizes code enforcem

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has issued Proposed Amendments To Public Access To Departmental Records and Access To Personal Information Regulations, a guide to accessing files held by the Attorney General’s office, as required under the s

Calaveras County California has added Zoning Plan Maps to its online site. Select an area on a countywide map to retrieve the pdf of the specific plan map.

Arizona Governor Napolitano signed HB 2785, Telephone Records, Unauthorized Sale Prohibited, into law this week. The Arizona law defines civil sanctions and classifies unauthorized access of telephone account information as a misdemeanor. As in other stat

A few months ago I wrote about the removal of thousands of court cases from state and federal court dockets. Although the use of private courts is ensconced in the California Constitution, the proceedings are public records, but there is no court docket i

The Work Number is an online repository for employment history that is often the only route to verify past employment. Many companies have eliminated in-house verification in favor of an outside contractor, which doesn’t have access to the kind of d

The Criminal Court of the City of New York issued their 2005 Annual Report of court operations. It sounds dry but actually encompasses a wide range of useful information. You’ll find descriptions of legislative changes to criminal law in 2005, addr

Alabama Governor Riley finalized legislation that will redact social security numbers from some newly filed public records. Read the press release. Under the new law, if a person does not give consent to reveal their Social Security number on a state gov

The Oklahoma Administrative Office of the Courts issued an advisory on its Web site that marriage licenses are still required to list the parties social security number. In light of recent legislation and questions about the need to collect social securit

The Louisiana legislature is considering SB 731, Prohibits the release of certain criminal information to the general public, which would remove the narrative portion of police reports from public access. This is the substance of the report, which descri

The Federal Trade Commission, with assistance from the major cell phone carriers, has filed civil suits in 5 federal jurisdictions against resellers of telephone call records, seeking to bar them from this activity and to press them to deliver, to the fed

A live webcast will be viewable for the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection hearing, Social Security Numbers in Commerce: Reconciling Beneficial Uses with Threats to Privacy. The webcast (realtime video and audio) is only availa

Data brokers, responding to subpoenas issued by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee requesting their customer lists are delivering some surprising material. Apparently, law enforcement is among the customers of the resellers of customer phone rec