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Information Wants to be Free

This title is a truism that is increasing becoming something of a cliche. However the truth behind it still appears to be lost upon many of those in government here and overseas, particularly those in the justice area. They are not alone; a number of civil liberties campaigners still seem to be stuck in the 60's and 70's before all this internet stuff came along. There are some very positive and empowering implications for crime victims. However, those who would withhold information from the public in a misled attempt to "protect" offenders are in for a shock.

These attitudes are evident in some of the pronouncements on the issue of parole hearings and inmate parole information being made public. Many within the system seem to think that only a privileged few should have access to this information. What they don't realise is that much of it is already out there. All the major newspapers publish court reports of all the more serious cases, and these often make separate news stories as well. All this is accessible in a searchable online archive in the case of the NZ Herald and some of the others. And it often appears on other miscellaneous webpages as well. All it needs is for someone motivated to extract and collate this data along with that from other sources and put it online in a suitable format such as HTML or XML for all to see, and there you have got a searchable database of criminal records.

And that is exactly what we have now done. Go to the Offender Database to see the result. Note that this is very far from complete, and we are only aiming to log the serious violent offenders for the last twenty years or so that are still alive and of an age such that they can still pose a threat to public safety in the future. For that reason we have left off some offenders whose offences would normally warrant their inclusion, on the grounds that they will be dead and burning in hell in the near future anyway, and therefore no longer of interest to us.

The question also arises - whose is this information anyway? Who paid for it to be collected? Who paid for the computer systems on which it resides? Who pays for the networks that enable it to be seen anywhere around the country whenever needed by our police and justice officials? That's right.... the taxpayer. In other words, you and me. Having paid for it, do we not have a right to access it? Do we not have a right to access information that may prove to be critical for the our safety or that of our families?

People have a right to manage their own risks, and they have a right to access any information that they may need in order to be able to do so effectively. By denying the public access to criminal records of violent offenders, the government is denying the public the information they need in order to be able to manage their own risk, and are therefore denying them the ability to exert control over their own lives. For most other risks that we are subject to, this is not the case - on the contrary, the government not only ensures that we have access to information, but they want to step in and attempt to manage the risks for us, OSH legislation being just one example.

We are legally entitled to information about all sorts of other risks, for example the breakdowns of ingredients on most supermarket foodstuffs, not to mention many of the warnings of rather obvious hazards on all sorts of products. Those who consider GE products to be a risk are able to manage this risk, as is their right, as the vast majority of GE/non-GE foodstuffs are labelled accordingly. Yet we are denied the information that would enable us all to manage the ever present and real risk of violence and/or sexual attack upon ourselves and our loved ones. This is information that should be a matter of public record, and it is only a matter of time before it will be so fully. The information is out there in part already, and victims and others will assuredly take pleasure in filling the gaps.

There is a such a database live on the net in Australia already - on a pay per use basis. The Home Office in Britain is working on something similar. The Family Watchdog Neighbourhood Predator Report not only lets people know if they have sex offenders in their area but actually provides their locations on a map of the area - and all for free! Other examples now up and running include this one in Ohio, complete with photos and full criminal records, and this one at the Texas Department of Public Safety, which has a Sex Offender Database freely accessible by anyone anywhere, and this one in Florida and this excellent one in Maryland which allows you to search by zip code or use an interactive map. And then there is the awesome Internet Open Records Project from which you can search criminal records of violent offenders in most states. There seem to be innumerable Sex Offender Databases online, from Chicago to Michigan, from Alaska in the frozen North to Mississipi in the Deep South. They are all listed here at this Database of Sex Offender Databases!. Yes, you did read that right! A Database to list all the databases! And there is also this searchable database of paedophiles up and running in the USA, on a pay per use basis.

This personal story from a mother of two girls right here in New Zealand should serve as a sobering warning and a powerful demnonstration of the need for the records of sex offenders to be made public.

It is evident from all the above that this is an inexorable and growing trend internationally. The New Zealand Government cannot just pretend that this will all go away. The best thing for them to do is to take control of the process themselves and release to the public the information they have paid for, preferably in online form as with the examples above. That way they will at least be able to impose some control or regulation of the data released. By ignoring this issue and hoping it will go away they will merely encourage others to distribute this information instead, and so lose control of it altogether.

Anyone who doubts that a crime victim could place information about an offender beyond the reach of New Zealand's jurisdiction needs to keep in mind the farcical attempt of our Health Department to censor a local cigar shop site a while back. Not only was it easy to bypass this censorship, but the publicity that ensued was more than the shop concerned could ever have dreamt of purchasing. Any motivated victim could put a site up about the offender that they wanted publicised on an overseas provider, such as Tripod.com or geocities to name just two of legions of such outfits, and there is precious little Matt Robson, Barry Wilson or the rest of the civil liberties crowd could do about it. And then there are all the hosting providers in Russia and other less regulated places....

If they think they can, they need to consider what happened when the hugely wealthy and powerful US music industry tried to put a stop to peer-to-peer file sharing applications, such as Napster, Gnutella and others. They got Napster, - and ten more like it popped up to replace it, each of them different and more evolved. And then along came torrents and sites such as Pirate Bay.... The US music industry has ended up playing a long, drawn out game of legal whack-a-mole. And music lovers carry right on trading their tunes as if nothing has happened... which it hasn't, as far as they are concerned. The civil liberties clique in this country is powerful, rich, and well connected, but they are minnows compared to Sony Music and others involved in the US battles. If the US music industry cannot stop music files being distributed online then Barry Hart et al don't have a chance of preventing criminal record data being similarly distributed.

Furthermore there are many, many more ways to distribute information now. Newsgroups, which have existed for many years, are one place a person wishing to distribute data can do so, concealing their identity using "anonymisers" and other tools, or operating from Internet cafes. But in addition there are now numerous message boards, and the above mentioned file sharing applications. And the latest means of distributing information are all the Instant Messaging applications, such as Messenger, and chat applications such as Internet Relay Chat and developments thereof also facilitate the movement of data. And a victim who really wanted to make sure everyone knows the name of an offender could simply use their cellphone to text-message the name out to all their friends' cellphones, and ask them to pass it on. Informal texting networks of this sort have already been put to effective use here and overseas.

And if that's not enough there are also many new small, handheld devices, capable of both storing and transmitting considerable quantities of information, for instance the Handspring Treo, Sony's new Clie, and many other cellphone/PDA hybrids now hitting the market. They make text messaging look downright primitive. And then there are a number of handheld gadgets, like the HP Ipaq, that are effectively fully fledged pocket computers. And then there are new technologies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, that allow near-instantaneous movement of data to and from these gadgets and to normal laptops and desktop computers. How anyone can control information in such an environment, once it gets out is anybody's guess.

And anyone who thinks that all these devices and technologies will not proliferate wildly is kidding themselves. The cellphone companies are keen to push these things as they enable new services and therefore more cashflow. Most cellphones on the market now have these sort of abilities, as predicted when this article was originally witten five years or so back. And once lots of people have these toys, who can control how they are used? We really are in a new age when it comes to the control of information, something which also has huge implications for name suppression as well, and something that a number of civil liberties proponents and parliamentary legislators fail to appreciate.

This article is by Peter Jenkins (the webmaster here). If you wish to use it in your own work, go right ahead, help yourself. Some acknowledgement of the source i.e. Sensible Sentencing Trust would be appreciated.