A Web Site Causes Unease in Police

Another story on the theme of public information and its value when compiled and posted on the Internet. Appropriately, the law does not differentiate between public records and information that are scattered among paper files and that same information neatly organized on a web site.

"The law generally draws no distinction between information that is nominally public but hard to obtain and information that can be fetched with an Internet search engine and a few keystrokes. The dispute over Mr. Sheehan's site is similar to a debate that has been heatedly taken up around the nation, about whether court records that are public in paper form should be freely available on the Internet.

In 1989, in a case not involving computer technology, the Supreme Court did allow the government to refuse journalists' Freedom of Information Act request for paper copies of information it had compiled from arrest and conviction records available in scattered public files. The court cited the "practical obscurity" of the original records.

But once accurate information is in private hands like Mr. Sheehan's, the courts have been extremely reluctant to interfere with its dissemination.

Mr. Sheehan, a 41-year-old computer engineer in Mill Creek, Wash., near Seattle, says his postings hold the police accountable, by facilitating picketing, the serving of legal papers and research into officers' criminal histories. His site collects news articles and court papers about what he describes as inadequate and insincere police investigations, and about police officers who have themselves run afoul of the law."

This debate will continue to rage, but I come down on the side of Mr. Sheehan, though I don't agree with his vindictive motives. If we as a free people have decided that certain information should be public and not private, then the form in which it is made public is irrelevant. If in electronic form for efficiency and easier dissemination, we are better served as a free people than attempting to rely on the notion of "practical obscurity."