Since Virginia is one of the states working to remove technical barriers so that search engines can access public records, I would really be interested to hear what the Roanoke Times has to say about it. Sure, Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center says that the information contains information like Social Security Numbers that should be removed, but surely the Times won’t fall for that nonsense. After all, if the government handles it, then it should be “everybody’s business”.

For the most part, I support this effort. I strongly support the idea of an almost completely transparent government. Without transparency in government, it becomes impossible for citizens to know what’s going on and, therefore, much more difficult to make an informed decision on election day.

In theory, allowing search engines to access already publically available information is a good thing; it makes the government just a little bit more transparent. Provided we’re not getting information that would endanger the lives and operations of those who defend us (domestically or internationally), that’s always a good thing.

In practice, I suspect that it will be problematic because, as Firefly‘s Shepherd Book once said, “A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned.” Even assuming that every single one of those people has nothing but the best of intentions, it is almost unavoidable that some mistakes will be made and that some personally identifiable information will slip through the cracks.

California’s chief information officer, Clark Kelso, said he is concerned about the consumer privacy issues raised by this initiative and he has directed all state agencies to redact Social Security numbers and other confidential information from documents that will now be available online.

If I’m reading this right, all of this data is already public, but it’s difficult to impossible to access online at this point. If making this data more readily accessible causes state governments to clean up their acts and protect the privacy of the people they serve, then it’s probably a very good thing in the long-term. However, if there are a lot of privacy violations springing up because of this over the next few months, I will almost guarantee that people (especially those in the governments in question) will blame Google, not their own shoddy bookkeeping.