There's a difference between the information simply being "public" and a social media account blasting out people's mugshots on Twitter.

I think, importantly, that there is no difference. Once the information is out there, it's out there. You can attempt to have a "right to be forgotten" but that's just relying on people to voluntarily comply. If I have a jpeg no force in the world can make me delete it if I want to preserve it.

Public "but only available if you go to city hall" is at least a little more restrictive until Zillow sends out people to start scanning public documents so they can build up their data.

Not public is really the best way to go; and here it sounds like the town has decided that part of the punishment for minor civil infractions is to be put in stocks in the town square, which might once have been enough to shame people into not stealing horses, but now carries a stigma that could last for your entire life.

> It will end up on the feed the court publishes, so it's not like it isn't public information.

Interactions that don’t result in charges will not. (That doesn’t mean some of it, at least, is not still technically public information that would be disclosable in response to a sunshine request, but there is a difference between that and publicly-advertised information.)

I agree that all of this info is public anyways - and back in the day I bet you could go to the library and look it all up.

But having it blasted out on a public radio program every week is too much for me.