Public Records Free Directory Blog

We get quite a few comments at the Public Records Free Directory from users who would like to have their personal information removed from public records. The term ‘public record’ means different things to different people, so a little background might be helpful.

In the strictest sense, ‘public records’ refers to those records held by governments that are accessible to the public. Court records, property tax records, deeds and other recorded documents, vital statistics, and business license records are some of the more common types of public records. For the most part, one can not have this type of public record modified or removed. Exceptions include the expunging of a court record.

The whole reason for the existence of the record and the public access to it would be defeated if one could simply opt-out. For example, you’d probably agree that it would not be in the public interest to allow a level 3 sex offender to have their publicly available records modified or removed from public access.

There are many services that obtain public records as described above and ‘add value’ to them by making them easier for you to search and/or by combining records from multiple jurisdictions. There is real value in this type of service, provided that you are diligent about knowing that the scope of data offered meets your needs. None of the services that deal with warehousing government public records are likely to remove any information from thier locally held files that would otherwise be available form the government data source. To do so would compromise the integrity of their service.

Another class of data that is sometimes referred to – incorrectly – as public records are the proprietary databases used by people finder services, web phone directories, search engine directories, and others. These databases are derived from multiple sources including government public records, and other sources that are not in the public domain.

Most of the private database providers have a processes in place to have non-public information removed.

US-Places.com has launched a government website mapping service. For any state, one can see town and county locations with links to the government websites.

This is a very interesting use of the Google Maps API, we find it quite useful.

The New York Attorney General’s office has a public information website designed to assist the public in finding and monitoring government information on a statewide basis. This website contains information on state elected officials, including their campaign finance reports, lobbyists and their records of who has paid them, legislative bills and supporting documents as well as records on those bills that were vetoed. There is also information on state corporations, charities and state contracts. Anyone can search this website by keyword or by using a “smart search” which accounts for misspellings, acronyms, transcription errors and other situtations that often hinder a complete search. There is also a mapping feature whereby one can browse government entities and officials by county.

The website is available in Spanish and there are also video tutorials to assist users. The Project Resources section provides information not only on where the database information originates from, but also provides good explanations of the data such as how a bill becomes law, what lobbyists do and what laws lobbyists are subject to.

For more New York or other state, county, or city public information resources, please visit the Free Public Records Directory.