At 04:42 PM 5/19/2001 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >On Sat, 19 May 2001, Eric Cordian wrote: > > > Silly judges, especially since the courts have already ruled that an > > individual has no privacy claim which he can use to prevent his SS number > > from being published in public records. > >You wouldn't happen to have any citations handy, would you? How about _Cox Broadcasting v. Cohn_ 420 US 469, 495 (1975) (at <http://laws.findlaw.com/us/420/469.html> - "By placing the information in the public domain on official court records, the State must be presumed to have concluded that the public interest was thereby being served. Public records by their very nature are of interest to those concerned with the administration of government, and a public benefit is performed by the reporting of the true contents of the records by the media. The freedom of the press to publish that information appears to us to be of critical importance to our type of government in which the citizenry is the final judge of the proper conduct of public business. In preserving that form of government the First and Fourteenth Amendments command nothing less than that the States may not impose sanctions on the publication of truthful information contained in official court records open to public inspection." regarding the relationship between public records and privacy rights. Completing the puzzle, take a look at _Ferm v. US Trustee_ (9th Cir., 1999, No. 97-16653) (at <http://laws.findlaw.com/9th/9716646.html>, where the Ninth Circuit held that a law which requires paid preparers of bankruptcy filings to make their SSN's available on the (public record) filings was constitutional, despite the risk of identity theft. _Cox Broadcasting_ is clear - once information ends up in court filings or other public records, it's unrestricted. List members may find Flavio Komuves' "We've Got Your Number: An Overview of Legislation and Decisions to Control the Use of Social Security Numbers as Personal Identifiers" (16 John Marshall Journal of Computer and Information Law 529 (1998)) of interest on the topic of SSNs and privacy. -- Greg Broiles [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Organized crime is the price we pay for organization." -- Raymond Chandler
