News-Record.com

So what she's essentially saying is she'd rather be blissfully unaware that this stuff is available, despite the fact that the folks most likely to exploit that information aren't waiting on the News & Record to post the addresses for those services -- they already have them. Out of sight, out of mind, eh?

This is one issue on which my position hasn't changed a bit in the more than 20 years I've been journamalisming: If there is a legitimate public purpose for the government to gather the information in the first place, the information needs to be public. If there's a compelling reason why the information shouldn't be public, maybe the government should re-examine its reasons for collecting it in the first place.

To that I would simply add that privacy is a very important, very complicated matter involving not only data collected and maintained by the government but also data collected and maintained by private corporations, not all of which the average person is aware of and not all of which have that average person's best interests at heart.

In that environment, it's difficult to assess and compare the dangers posed by various agencies and entities collecting various kinds of information. But it's something we as a nation need to figure out.

Two days before that feature, I had seen three police cars down the street. I wondered why they were there. When I saw the Web address for the police department's incident search site, I immediately went there to find out what crime had been committed in my neighborhood. To me, there's a distinct public service value.

The sex offender registry is problematic. Many law enforcement folks do NOT think it should be online because it can be misinterpreted. When a child is molested and a neighbor finds a local sex offender, that person is often targeted even though his offense might have been soliciting an (adult) prostitute. No, not a great thing to have done, but NOT deserving of hostility or attack because one assumes a sex offender has always attacked a child.

Information is power and can be abused. I hope they figuratively fry the folks selling cell phone records and make it as hard to use public information as my bank does for me to use online bill payment.

I'm tired of getting phone calls and email when my corporation is again listed in another online list or directory.

As for Google's righteous stand, whether it's for their own protection of IP or for my benefit, I don't care. It is no business of the government what searches I do online. That's a gutsy stand and I applaud them for taking it.

The answer on the sex offender registry is to give more details of the crimes or to have much broader categories. I have no idea why they don't do this. It's a far different circumstance when it's a 17 year old and a 15 year old vs. a 45 year old and a 6 year old.