Its members are from federal and local governments, academia, industry and privacy advocacy groups. The task force will issue its final report in the fall. A survey commissioned by the task force found that 90 percent of 1,000 Americans surveyed did not think criminal history information should be posted on the Internet. The draft report recommends that privacy laws be changed so that decisions on whether to release criminal information are based on the type of information, rather than on which organization is storing that information. If it was decided that information about arrests that did not result in convictions were not to become public information, then court records referring to that information would have to be purged.
Public information is public information.
It doesn't matter whether it is on the Internet or at a courthouse. If you purge public records in the name of privacy, you are trying to rewrite history. Kirtley said the novelty of the Internet is making the public overly concerned about privacy. They will eventually get used to all this information being available. I just hope they don't pass repressive legislation in the interim.