• Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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    3 months ago

    Each one of these events is easily shown to have good merits for being public record. Even ignoring the obvious case of “we want to track what the police/courts were actually doing”.

    Traffic accidents

    Occurs in front of your property and cause some amount of damage to your stuff that officers didn’t outline in any reports. You want to be able to figure out who did it so you can send them the bill/sue them. Hiding these records doesn’t make sense. Other obvious uses would be to find out where someone went/is missing, eg if someone died.

    traffic citations

    You’re attempting to hire someone for a job, part of that job is some amount of driving. Being able to lookup if they have any record of driving poorly would be due diligence you’d expect a company to do. Hell getting into an Uber or Lyft… You might want to lookup your driver. You could be surprised.

    bankruptcies

    Hire someone to do something related to finances in your company? Or to file your taxes? Might want to actually double check they’re not idiots on their own dime either. Someone asks you for a loan, or any other financial related stuff. Records of them defaulting are important.

    buying a house

    Your dog ran up to me and bit me, then ran away. Being able to get the property details can be highly important.

    getting divorced

    Can trigger a number of things. If divorce has any kid related issues… and one parent no longer has rights to the child… Schools/doctors can validate that one parent no longer has those rights without just blindly trusting random documents one parent provides.

    • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      You make mostly good points — I still disagree, but I can at least see your side.

      The divorce and kids thing though is not what you think it is. Divorce and child custody agreements are two separate legal things and child custody agreements are thankfully not a matter of public record.

      • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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        3 months ago

        Divorce and child custody agreements are two separate legal things and child custody agreements are thankfully not a matter of public record.

        And yet I was able to pull my parents Divorce from decades ago and in those documents were details about who has rights to me… I think this is likely a state by state thing. Though my name was never directly mentioned.