These records have always been available to people with money to spend on a lawyer with a subscription. So what you're complaining about is that normal people can also access the information now.

Quantity has a quality of its own. To use a similar example, arrest and imprisonment records are public data in my country. But you have to actually go to the courthouse and fill out some paperwork and/or hire a lawyer to do it for you.

This has consequences. For example, in some US states it takes a few seconds for an employer to find out a candidate was once arrested while drunk, or has a conviction for a minor offense from 15 years ago. And employers do that sort of search routinely, because it's free and easy. Only someone being targeted for a specific background check gets that treatment here, because it's not so easy.

Same argument applies to, for example, reading the previous divorce case for someone you're dating. Only a real weirdo would do that here, in part because it involves time and money. If it's freely available online, I do think it would be a lot more common.

I don't know whether it'd be better or worse to have such information more accessible, but it can change things.

> Only a real weirdo would do that here, in part because it involves time and money.

I think your parent's point is that money isn't an issue for the rich. A billionaire doesn't care that it costs $150 to find out, they don't care that it costs a $1,000 to find out. So suddenly information becomes a class issue. Either it should be available to nobody or everybody, money shouldn't factor into it.

i don't think that's a valid argument.

A lot of policies or laws don't affect billionares the same way. We don't fine speeding tickets based on income like norway. Nobody is changing any laws to make it proportional impact on billionares.

Nice false equivalence.

Lawyer: duty-bound professional, is an officer of the court, can be publicly disbarred, very expensive degree that needs to be paid off

Some guy on the internet with an axe to grind: ???

I believe in California you only need to pass the bar to become a lawyer, no expensive degree required.

You're all missing the point... ANYbody with a Lexis Nexus subscription, or a Bloomberg terminal, or one of those background check sites, already has this exact capability. It's not new.

You dont need to be a lawyer to access any of it... I think the other poster simply meant that lawyers generally have Lexis subscriptions, already.

Also, the various court databases this site is searching are ALREADY online and publicly available, and have been for years. This is just providing a free, unified interface with a fast search index.

> This is just providing a free, unified interface with a fast search index.

Yes, and that is a phase change difference. It's not a trivial enhancement.

So you think the $10/month fee for existing services is what induced the phase change? I've done hundreds of these searches, paid maybe $20 total.

I have a different theory about why this bugs you... Previous to today, you were ignorant of that these records were available online so cheaply and quickly. Nothing has really changed, except your own anxiety levels as your worldview struggles to absorb this information. But your brain wants the change to be external, because that's less threatening than the realization that this capability has been lurking out there in the world, all along.

Ha! It bugs me for exactly the reasons I stated above.

At some level I get the angst about typing someone's name, especially if it's fairly unusual, and getting back a whole lot of information about, in this case, mostly legal-related stuff and in others past addresses, things they've written etc. for free. (And, if you know something about them you can probably sift the returns somewhat effectively.) You may be able to find out a lot about your date, your neighbor, etc.

On the other hand, outside of casually checking out someone, the reality is that this has long been available for anyone want to spend a very few bucks to do so.

That does not appear to be correct. You can see the requirements to be admitted to the California Bar here: https://www.calbar.ca.gov/admissions/requirements

Note in particular the education requirement:

> Here are all the options:

> - Three or four years of study at a law school accredited by the American Bar Association

> - Four years of study at a State Bar-registered, fixed-facility law school

> - Four years of study with a minimum of 864 hours of preparation at a registered unaccredited distance-learning or correspondence law school

> - Four years of study under the supervision of a state judge or attorney

> - A combination of these programs

If all you've done is pass the bar exam, you can go to hell. It may not even be possible; the requirements for the California exam are behind a login wall, but other states have restricted eligibility to take the exam based on the testee's education. I assume they didn't want to be embarrassed by having the wrong sort of person pass the bar.

I stand corrected.

I’m sure both of the attorneys who have done an apprenticeship are happy about that.

The happiness of lawyers is something I am quite happy to not care about. :)

I think you may be misunderstanding what this is... All of these documents were ALREADY public records, and were ALREADY available online. Most US courts have been publishing these records online, for a while now.

And they are ALREADY other websites/search products that provide a unified search interface... Lexis Nexus is probably the biggest/oldest, and I believe Bloomberg also has this feature... There are dozens (if not hundreds) of cheap public record search websites that charge $10/month for it, too.

If you're surprised by all this, you haven't been paying attention... For a few decades now.

Powerful corporate and government actors have massive surveillance and data warehousing capabilities that aren't going away. At the very least, putting those powers into the hands of the public helps to level the playing field.

Society will have to change to accommodate the digital panopticon. I don't see the digital panopticon going away, though.

> putting those powers into the hands of the public helps to level the playing field

Agreed, but ...

> Powerful corporate and government actors have massive surveillance and data warehousing capabilities that aren't going away.

To nitpick: They aren't going away as long as we spread that message. It's not easy, but we can make them go away. People do accomplish things and change the world - just compare today's world with 500 years ago; all the differences the result of people changing things. Defeatism is trendy, and who benefits? (The status quo.)

> To nitpick: They aren't going away as long as we spread that message. ... Defeatism is trendy, and who benefits?

It's not defeatism-- it's just being realistic. I don't believe there's any useful method to make government actors comply with the law. I have an, admittedly US perspective, but evidence the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, the NSA and the subsequent Church committee hearings, and Snowden's disclosures as examples. The power afforded by mass surveillance and data warehousing is too attractive not to be abused.

> It's not defeatism-- it's just being realistic.

You must have heard that line from pessimists 10,000 times before. There would be no startups, science, democracy, etc. if people believed it. We'd be living in caves - 'let's be realistic, we've been living in them for 190,000 years!'

> I don't believe there's any useful method to make government actors comply with the law.

The evidence is overwhelmingly otherwise: Many, many government actors have been caught, prosecuted and punished, at every level - including multiple Presidents, at least one Vice President (off the top of my head), members of Congress, federal judges, generals and admirals, and more, and that's just the federal level.

Goverments have widely differing levels of corruption, and the US has in the past been one of the best - so it's effective. Other countries are also more and less effective than the US, and we can see what they do and what works. There is plenty of research. Nothing is stopping you, but you.

The current trend in defeatism - against all evidence, in a country with one of the most effective governments in the history of humanity - serves someone's interests. Who? Who benefits from spreading this message?

I don't see any problem with this. These cases are in the public record, why should the public not have the ability to search them for free without requiring access to expensive legal indices?

The public has always had the ability to search them, it's just been more difficult to do in the past.

Lowering the barriers to this is not necessarily a good thing. For example: if I have to drive to the county clerk's office to get records, I am unlikely to do so. This means that if I need the information, I will go get it, but if I do not need it, I won't bother.

The patent section being so easily searched is very useful and I see no downsides there.

Sure, why not? It's not like anything embarrassing or things you want kept secret should be in court proceedings

https://www.judyrecords.com/record/vvfe9mivbec8c

When the giant Equifax hack happened creditors had to start doing more diligence to make sure they weren't allowing fraudulent borrowing since it was happening so frequently.

So optimistically maybe having lots of information public and easily searchable like this ultimately leads to a similar outcome. Like maybe it forces us to stop using date of birth to verify identity since it's so easy to find anyone's date of birth.

If the information is going to be out there maybe it's safer for everyone to have it than just a few people. If just a few people have it, and they use it to screw just a few other people, there's no pressure to fix it.

Or of course maybe that's wishful thinking.

Don't lawyers already have access to case law like this? I feel like this is not a new thing, but giving access to everyone is novel.

I could be wrong on my facts.

Generally you’ve had to pay for an expensive service (Lexus nexus), or go to the courthouse yourself to pull the records. Search was also a bit of a black art.

So generally easy to hide in the noise. Here you can just put in a name, and off you go.

Lexis has the best search capabilities, but there are dozens of cheap clones now that start at $10/month to search these same records.

The public has access to most local court data in my state (Ohio, US) thru websites run by the various local courts. A state-level database for government use is, as far as I know, still not actually available (though it has been in planning and some phase of execution for 10+ years).

> Don't lawyers already have access to case law like this?

Yes, through expensive services like Westlaw and Lexis.

I couldn't find my name. And i know it should be in here. So I'm not that worried yet...

There's no escape. It's just a matter of time.

Seems closer to a form of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance

There are public court records (criminal, civil), and there are non-public court records (e.g. sealed - juvenile, divorce, etc.)

As far as I can tell, all of this data is of the public nature.

While it may feel weird to type in someone's name and see their history with regard to legal filings... that is the society we live in: an open society.

Aggregating a number of disconnected data sources for search I think is absolutely a legitimate usage of the data.

I have some records that are sealed, but show up in this database. So there are records that were once ‘public’ but are no more, but this database makes them public again.

FYI, I found a couple folks I know’s divorce records. So I wouldn’t assume those hard and fast rules apply consistently.

Fair enough - in my state they are limited to parties involved and their counsel.

The public can still see the filing and result (when the divorce was granted), but the actual documents are restricted so as not to air all of one's dirty laundry unnecessarily.