this comment chain seems to be more focused on the moral aspects of privacy rather than the legal ones.
Sure. Fair. Valid.
Except it's really more nuanced than just saying "legality != morality", especially when the rubber meets the road, and when it comes time to actually implementing systems of recording (and potentially disseminating) the public's interaction with their local jurisdictions and municipalities, and I think those nuances get lost when sitting on the periphery of installing policy and reading about statecraft compared to being inside, operating the levers and pulleys and-as the phrase goes-"watching the sausage get made"..
That's why I'm being so willing to challenge some of the notions shared here today: I'm trying to be the voice of the insider and expose some of the reasons why certain things may be the way they are with regards to public data and open records.
You're right legal does not necessarily mean moral, but when it's time for measurable outcomes and results of human actions, and interactions between citizens and their local governments the legal framework does a much better job of delivering those outcomes and results on a consistent basis than most others, and is the framework we use of keeping the operators and participants equally consistently accountable (most of the time, anyway).
There are definitely many public records that should be as widely available as possible, so good work helping municipalities with those. I don't think people are saying that all searchable records are problematic. They are saying that some uses and some specific types of records are problematic -- those that do more harm than good.
As an example, if hypothetically I were a victim of some embarrassing emergency, I wouldn't mind being part of anonymous aggregated statistics, but I definitely would object to anybody but myself and essential personnel having open access to the 911 recording, and I definitely wouldn't want my employer or neighbors to know any details or anything linking me to them without my permission or a substantiated court order, released under seal.
Sure. Fair. Valid.
Except it's really more nuanced than just saying "legality != morality", especially when the rubber meets the road, and when it comes time to actually implementing systems of recording (and potentially disseminating) the public's interaction with their local jurisdictions and municipalities, and I think those nuances get lost when sitting on the periphery of installing policy and reading about statecraft compared to being inside, operating the levers and pulleys and-as the phrase goes-"watching the sausage get made"..
That's why I'm being so willing to challenge some of the notions shared here today: I'm trying to be the voice of the insider and expose some of the reasons why certain things may be the way they are with regards to public data and open records.
You're right legal does not necessarily mean moral, but when it's time for measurable outcomes and results of human actions, and interactions between citizens and their local governments the legal framework does a much better job of delivering those outcomes and results on a consistent basis than most others, and is the framework we use of keeping the operators and participants equally consistently accountable (most of the time, anyway).
The focus, again, I say is warranted.