[Dataloss] FW: Legislative CALL TO ACTION re Attorney General opinion on public records

[David Bloys]

-----Original Message-----
From: CTR [mailto:ctr at satx.rr.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2007 9:55 PM
To: ctr at satx.rr.com
Subject: Legislative CALL TO ACTION re Attorney General opinion on public
records


As you know by now, the Texas Attorney General issued an Opinion (GA-0519)
last week (2/21/07) that basically said it is a crime (that could subject a
County Clerk to fines, jail time or both) to disclose SSNs in public records
(land records and other courthouse records may be public, but people have a
right for personal identification in them, such as SSNs, to remain
confidential).  The AG opinion cited both state (Sec. 552.147 of the Texas
Government Code) and federal (Public Information Act) laws.

So, most County Clerks overreacted, by preventing abstractors, surveyors,
etc. from searching public records, either entirely or at least until county
personnel could review the documents first.

Now, the Texas state House of Representatives will be voting on emergency
legislation soon, probably tomorrow (Wed 2/28/07), that may remove the
portion of state law that caused the AG to limit access to public records.

Recent efforts to solve this problem before it got this far have been
incomplete, centering around redaction, which is usually done by an
expensive computer program that crawls through documents and blacks out SSNs
it finds.  Such programs have been consistently shown to miss lots of SSNs.
And removing SSNs one by one, by county personnel, is an overwhelming task
that will take years to get right.

We need to get records back in the courthouse.  Before the internet, access
to personal information has always been limited by requiring a personal
visit to a courthouse.  And most of the people who search them are
professionals who keep this information protected.

For example, laws that regulate licensing of Texas Registered Professional
Land Surveyors, also require that they perform their duties to a higher
standard of moral and ethical responsibility that already requires the
protection of such personal information.  And, title abstractors are bound
by their contracts with mortgage lenders to keep non-public personal
information (NPPI) secret during a job, and destroy it once the job is done,
under previous Federal law (the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999).

It is possible that by asking our legislators for a specific solution, we
may get somewhere.

Any change to state law will still leave County Clerks open to violating
Federal law, because once documents are out on a county clerk's website, or
they are sold in bulk to a website that resells them (CourthouseDirect,
etc.) for anyone in the world to download, the SSNs are out of the county's
control.

We should ask legislators to be specific in reopening access to records, but
ONLY at the local level, in person, at the courthouse.  They should require
removal of documents from all county websites, and put a moratorium on
further bulk sales to 3rd parties.

Please contact, by fax or email, your legislators with some version of the
following message.

Follow the link below and just enter your address to find out who your
elected officials are:

HYPERLINK
"http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/"http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/

Dear Senator (name) or Dear Representative (name) ,

The February 21, 2007 ruling (GA-0519) by the Attorney General of Texas
relative to the duties of a County Clerk, under Section 552.147 of the Texas
Government Code as enacted by the 79th Legislative session, has had
unintended consequences in the access to the public records of all counties
of Texas. As I am sure you are aware, the initial reaction of some County
Clerks, based on advice from their County Attorney, has been to close both
physical and internet-based access to the public records in light of the
potential for criminal offense liability if access is allowed to information
restricted by the Public Information Act (PIA).

This denial of access has had immediate detrimental and/or devastating
affect on the ability of abstractors, surveyors, and private investigators
to perform the necessary research in the transaction of real property rights
and the issuance of title insurance. You can easily project the delay and
cost for all parties, when researchers are faced with having to request a
large number of public record copies, only to wait for the County Clerk to
have to review each document on an individual basis.

The state legislature will be taking up the issue soon in an attempt to give
relief to County Clerks.
 
But, any change to state law will still leave County Clerks open to
violating Federal law, because once images of documents are put on a county
clerk's website, or they are sold in bulk to a website that resells them,
for anyone in the world to download, SSNs and other confidential personal
data are totally out of the county's control.

I ask you to be specific in rewriting the law to reopen access to records,
but ONLY at the local level, in person, at the courthouse.  And at the same
time, make the law require removal of document images from all county
websites, and put a moratorium on further bulk sales to 3rd parties.  This
way, County Clerks, and only those professionals they know by name and see
on a daily basis, can once more be the gatekeepers and safeguarders of this
restricted personal information.

As your constituent and a research professional of the State of Texas, I am
respectfully requesting your personal involvement in an immediate response
to this crisis resulting from unintended consequences of state law.

Sincerely,
(your name, address, phone etc.)

   _____  

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