And most importantly, who does get access to the records? That exculsive access will give them a lot of power.
Also goes for divorces. By and large I agree with your take, but playing around with the search got me thinking that maybe we just make too much a matter of public record and that some things might just be too noisy, even if it isn’t the biggest privacy violation per se. Still mulling it over though, so I can’t say I’m committed to that position yet, feel free to talk me back.
I think the main concern is that the more powerful the actor (e.g., government is very powerful) the more important transparancy is, and the more vulnerable the actor, the more important privacy is.
For example, if an Apple (picking a random company) employee complains to authorities about dangerous working conditions, that employee may be very vulnerable - Apple could blacklist them; other businesses, if they learned of the complaint, could do the same, not wanting a 'troublemaker'. And that employee may be financially vulnerable, needing the job; their privacy should be maintained if possible. But Apple and the government are both powerful and there should be transparency about the working conditions, investigation, and outcome.
You could go by legal entity, just make lawsuits involving corporations public, and lawsuits between individuals private: but while Apple might have global influence, your rich and litigious neighbor in a rural county is probably a more immediate concern to you. Also individuals can sue corporations and corporations can sue individuals.
I’m still inclined to think court records should stay public, but I’m now more interested in seeing if there’s a kind of filter we can put on what we make public than I was two weeks ago.
My own name brought up a couple tickets. In 2014 I got a cell phone ticket. There's something kind of funny seeing an all-caps official document explaining that THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA were all arrayed against me! :)
I was able to find almost every single other person I searched though, chose not to dig into it any further than I could confirm it was someone I actually knew, typically by birth date.
In theory, anything that went to trial would have transcripts available (unless it's sealed, like for minors). Many of these complaints could still have the transcripts available for the cases associated with them. But it's hard to tell what the alleged problem or misconduct is. I emphasize alleged because I assume the nonpublic ones were ones in which the lawyer was not found "guilty". In my state, the Bar will only investigate prosecutors if the court has already issued a statement determining prosecutorial misconduct occurred. So prosecutors get off without scrutiny most of the time.
Except of course, when "national security" is involved.
