Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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Freedom of
information
With surveys showing that privacy ranks higher in importance
than censorship, officials respond by clamping down
Over the years, newspapers published in America’s small towns have filled
the role of town crier, recording virtually every birth and death and much
else of what happened to the people in their communities. These journals
would rank high school graduating classes and log real estate deals. Beyond
keeping their readers abreast of weddings and the like, they would print
court dockets and other potentially embarrassing lists. They would report
who got divorced, lost a lawsuit, entered the hospital, plunged into bankruptcy
or went to jail.
Nowadays, computers can easily sort huge amounts of personal data. In
so doing, users are able to gather on a national or even a global scale
much the same type of information that long had been available in community
newspapers. The advent of online services, increasingly berthed on the
Internet, makes it possible for journalists working from remote locations
to download data. Technology enables researchers to delve into intriguing
social patterns that could not be seen before. Reporters cross-pollinate
disparate databases to uncover meaningful matchups that wind up anchoring
a robust investigative series. Drawing on a wealth of materials from cyberspace,
journalists are able to do extensive background checks on newsworthy people.
Yet the sheer power and vast reach of these high-tech tools have also
raised privacy concerns that rarely surfaced when paper records sat in
dusty bins in City Hall basements. Moreover, when private records are breached,
press credibility suffers. Take the case of the late Arthur Ashe, who decided
to reveal his HIV status only after his confidential lab results were sold
to the National Enquirer.
Officials have responded to such horror stories by moving to curb press
access to public records. With surveys showing that privacy now ranks ahead
of censorship as the key issue facing the Internet, many jurisdictions
are clamping down. Authorities have also made it more costly for news outlets
to get information by signing contracts with private firms to digitize
public-sector data, which is then sold.
The proposed federal Data Privacy Act of 1997 "requires the interactive
computer service industry to develop voluntary guidelines" for notifying
users when collecting personal information. Under pressure from Congress
and the Federal Trade Commission, the database service industry, on which
investigative reporters rely, has sharply curtailed the release of Social
Security numbers, unlisted telephone numbers, mother’s maiden names and
dates of birth.
The courts continue to serve as a constitutional bulwark against this
trend. Last July, the Ohio Supreme Court, in a 5-2 ruling, held that a
campus newspaper was entitled to a database of student disciplinary actions
which Miami University officials had refused to disclose. "Without having
access to the records, both on campus and off campus, a community has no
way of knowing whether a (crime) problem exists, or where it exists," said
Steve Geimann, past president of the Society of Professional Journalists.
At the federal level, the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994, which
requires states to limit public access to "personal information" in drivers’
license and motor vehicle records, was held to be unconstitutional by a
federal court in South Carolina, two days before it was to take effect
in 1997. The court found that names, driver identification numbers, addresses,
phone numbers and photos, all of which the overturned law purports to shield,
are not the type of "intimate matters" in which individuals enjoy a constitutionally
protected "reasonable expectation of confidentiality."
Despite such favorable rulings, the threat to the Freedom of Information
Act remains clear. Ongoing moves to withdraw records from the public domain
curb the ability of journalists to use these records to fulfill their watchdog
role. As The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch noted a recent editorial: "A democratic
society ceases to be democratic when government operates in the dark, and
when those in power are beyond public scrutiny. Some loss of personal privacy
is simply a cost of freedom."
Glass is senior correspondent of Cox Newspapers.
