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. Getting rid of the stovepipes that treat criminal justice information differently would have a profound affect on how federal agencies do business, Belair said. 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. Court records have historically been public information, said Jane Kirtley, professor of media at the University of Michigan.
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. People probably panicked when Gutenberg published his first Bible, Kirtley said. They will eventually get used to all this information being available.