> I'd also like to see a law making it criminal for a site to post such information without also obviously posting that charges are dropped. You have one week to either take it down entirely or clearly mark it as dropped. If neither is done the post will be considered extortion.

Not only should it be criminal, but people should also be able to file civil suits for damages against businesses that are willing to expend resources to dig up and publish criminal charges and arrest records, but refuse to expend any resources to follow up on their published claims.

It's one thing when tabloids parade around dirt on public figures, it's another thing entirely when the same is done to private individuals.

Criminal charges and arrest records are public information. You could not possibly pass a law forbidding someone from displaying public information. And we certainly would not want to pivot to secret court systems.

I think what you really want is just transparency.

Yeah, I think we need to allow publishing them so you can't have secret arrests. What I'm proposing to make criminal is publishing deceptive records. So long as you tell the whole truth, fine.

I don’t know how you could police that or enforce it. Half truths are basically the entire modern mainstream media.

Arrest type information just needs to be more publicly available so these secondary sites don’t need to exist.

Such a law probably wouldn't be Constitutional. Speech can't be compelled.

It would probably pass muster if framed in terms of defamation. Making it statutorily defamation (i.e. you automatically lose civil suits, regardless of your intent to defame) to distribute someone’s arrest record without also distributing their conviction record with equal prominence would probably strike the right balance.

It needs to be criminal so the people that do it offshore can be nailed.

Unlikely. The Constitution contains no exceptions for defamation.

Defamation is already a civil tort. Are you under the impression that the First Amendment protects defamatory speech from being litigated as defamation?

Can't it? Apparently the US government can compel you to act as though your website's records haven't been seized – which includes publishing your weekly “our records haven't been seized” notice.

That is not legally correct. There is no such law or precedent. If you disagree then please provide a specific citation.

> In September 2014, U.S. security researcher Moxie Marlinspike wrote that "every lawyer I've spoken to has indicated that having a 'canary' you remove or choose not to update would likely have the same legal consequences as simply posting something that explicitly says you've received something."[15][16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

Those are informal opinions and carry no legal weight.