
If You Run a Red Light, Will Everyone Know? - echair
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/technology/03essay.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin
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bigbang
Bill Gates's record:

<http://criminalsearches.com/details.aspx?id=5778713>

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fallentimes
I have very mixed thoughts on this. I guess if the information is public to
begin with I don't have a problem making it more accessible. But should the
information even be public, especially with all the mistakes that plague the
data? I'll probably be thinking about this for the rest of the day.

What's everyone else think?

~~~
jrockway
I think this is interesting. I looked for myself, and the information is just
plain wrong. (I have no criminal record, but I clicked a link to some
affiliate site that gives you general information.) I learned something new --
getting wrong information is more comforting to me than getting no
information. If someone decides they want to kill me for disagreeing with
their Hacker News post, they will look up "my" address, be excited that they
found me, and then go to the wrong city to do the deed. If there was no
information, they would keep looking until they found something, but this
false positive should satisfy their curiosity and they will stop digging
deeper. (Of course, if someone really wanted to kill me, they should look at
my public Dopplr profile instead :P)

 _But should the information even be public, especially with all the mistakes
that plague the data?_

The legal system provides recourse for publishing false information. If
someone turns you down for a job because of the false criminal record, I'm
sure your lawyer can help you out. In most cases, though, the information is
probably correct, so there is no point in hiding it.

This is sort of like the argument against Google Street View -- "what if
someone sees me walking out of a sex shop." I say, well... eventually society
will realize that people buy stuff at sex shops, and we can stop worrying
about what other people think. It will help society evolve.

I think the same is true with criminal records. If everyone sees how prevalent
marijuana use is, eventually society will stop demonizing it. In the case of
other crimes, perhaps you can explain yourself out of the shame.

Either way, I think this will hurt individuals in the short run and help
society as a whole in the long run. (That probably means it will be made
illegal in another week or so. Call me cynical :P)

~~~
time_management
_I think the same is true with criminal records. If everyone sees how
prevalent marijuana use is, eventually society will stop demonizing it. In the
case of other crimes, perhaps you can explain yourself out of the shame._

This sort of assertion I tend to doubt. Many of the people who seek to
demonize and preserve the criminal status of marijuana have, in fact, used it,
although they defend their behavior with pithy excuses like "I was young and
dumb" or "it was the '60s; it was different back then". Society doesn't
demonize the rare vices, unless they are dangerous to innocent people, e.g.
pedophilia, so much as it lunges for the common ones. What do the morals
police stand to gain from crusading against, say, a blue-and-yellow-striped-
dress fetish? Virtually no one has such a fetish, so it gives them no power
base. Premarital sex, on the other hand...

You might hope that people with rigid moral stances might soften them when
they discover good people who live differently, but the fact is that a lot of
these people are more inclined to turn against old friends than to revise
their opinions.

The issue with vice voyeurism is, moreover, not one of acceptance so much as
privacy and professionalism. Pretty much everyone accepts that sex is a part
of normal life, but no one would want to have his/her sexual history available
on the Internet, nor come up at a place of work.

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noonespecial
I plan to tell my children, once they are old enough, not to get tattoos. The
reason being is that you will force your 35 year old self to live branded with
what your 16 year old self thought was cool.

On second thought, tattoos can be erased by laser, Myspace might be much more
permanent...

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Tell them to get the tattoos, and stay the heck away from social sites until
they're 25.

(I say that only partially in jest)

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mattmaroon
This site just eliminates the step of Googling for the county's web page.
There's nothing here you couldn't do for free, it just makes it a tiny bit
easier.

~~~
mleonhard
The site makes it a _lot_ easier. There are thousands of counties in the
United States. This site lets you search all of them in a moment.

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bprater
And we continue our march closer to the year 1984.

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DanielBMarkham
To argue at the extremes, we shouldn't live in a world where cameras pick up
your every public move and speech and allow others unfettered access into our
lives.

It's been said, and I agree, that the ability to forget is what keeps us civil
-- both with our family members and with others.

I think we need to legislate some kind of forgetfulness when it comes to
misadventures.

I'm afraid we're beginning to live in a period without history.

~~~
utnick
yep we are, funny anecdote:

One older guy I went to school with made a posting over 15 years ago on some
small usenet group about doing LSD.. its now one of the top 10 results for his
name on google.

He would have never thought back then that anything he writes on that small
forum would every be accessible and searchable by the general public.

Its not fair. Google should really anonymize most usenet postings done > 10
years ago.

~~~
bprater
It is that kind of self-policing (is that how it is spelled?) that really
sucks.

And it is one of the reasons I make little use of Facebook. I realize that
silly stuff or things I'm passionate about now might come back to haunt me.

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aniketh
searched for bill clinton, and most likely this is not the right one, but the
offense is amazing (EATTING ALL OF THE HAMBURGERS) :
<http://criminalsearches.com/details.aspx?id=53330029>

~~~
ConradHex
Too many typos to be real.

Weird...

