If posting a back story on how the author got into the situation that the article is about is against the rules, I will gladly remove my comment.

I wrote my suggestion to you not based on the "rules", so much as good taste. The author of that piece never wrote of anything that would have been affected by why she landed in jail. What value does it add?

Down voted twice for suggesting you don't try and publicly invade someone's privacy just for the hell of it? When did HN become 4chan?

Court documents are public record. As in, everyone has a right to view court documents as long as they've not been legally suppressed.

Whether people have the right to look at the records or not is a separate question from whether it is polite or appropriate to direct attention at them.

Its the aggregation of information for no purpose. Plenty of info in "doxs" is public, doesn't make it any more seedy to do it.

I think if the author were concerned about her privacy she would not have written an article for LA Weekly about the experience.

Perhaps the downvotes were because your comment had little to do with the article in particular, or the larger issue of prison reform in general.