public access to records

[Craig Partridge <craig () aland bbn com>]

> So you don't have to get into confidential records illegally to get
> what you want to find out, you just have to know where to go for
> *legal, public* files which say the same thing or the essence thereof.

    I rather enjoyed the moderator's long addendum to the story of folks
breaking into federal criminal history databases.  It seems to me that it
makes an important point.  A lot of information in the US is open public
(in many cases, I believe on the grounds that free public inspection is a
good protection against shady dealings).

    One of the interesting trends over the past many years is that
computerization has made this information easier to get again.  I say again
because it used to be easy to get.  In the early years of the US, (17th
and 18th century) folks didn't move anywhere near as much as they do today.
All the records were local and public.  As people become more mobile,
and populations boomed, the record keeping system in the US broke down,
and was only slowly brought back into order in the late 19th and early
20th century.

    The best example of this phenomena that I know of is vital records.
Barring fire or loss of records, you can find good vital records for most
Northeastern communities in the US up to the mid-18th century -- I think
Southern recording may have been less good but also know a lot was lost
in the Civil War.  Then record keeping dropped off, particularly in larger
towns and cities.  It is well-known to genealogists that getting the family
tree through the mid-1800s is one of the hardest steps.  Record keeping was
revived under state supervision in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

    Note that by bringing vital record keeping to the state level, suddenly
information become more accessible than before.  Instead of knowing the town
someone lived in (which was where records were kept in the 18th century) one
needed merely to know the state.  Now there are even computerized listings
that make it easy to track down death certificates (these listings are actually
from Social Security data, but I believe one could do one from state
information too if necessary).
    
    Anyway, my larger point is that we're going full circle.  Information that
has always been public is becoming easier to access again.

Craig