Here's another way to look at it: it's not that there are additional "states" (public, nonpublic) that data can be in, but that their are newly relevant forms of metadata in play. Two of them:
* The surrounding context in which public data is presented (sort of the flip side, the "responsibility" side, of the coin whose other side is "collection copyright").
* The promotion of the data; for instance, the extent to which data is packaged to have higher rank on search engines (or, for that matter, its availability on search engines at all).
So it's not that mugshots aren't public data, so much as that there is public data that (a) shouldn't be packaged for search engines (Redditors, with their "no doxxing" policy, should have no trouble understanding this) and (b) shouldn't be packaged in ways that create bogus implications.
just to add to this...
The persons name is mentioned 11 times in the source code,in the URL, in the title, in an H1, in an alt image tag, and many other instances...
I see no reason why all of those instances are justified by public interests.
I actually do not understand why mugshots should be public in the first place.
We already have a way to check someone's criminal record - why the need for public access to a record of someone being arrested - even though no charges might have been filed?
The first amendment - news media companies and others argue the public has 'a right to know,' so even if a government body chooses not to publish them others will. News organizations are quick to sue for access to anything like this that they know will sell a lot of papers.
I consider this a prime example of why the US needs a constitutional privacy amendment. In many European countries police and reporters are forbidden to reveal an arrestee's name until charges have been laid against the person, and some governments (eg the UK, from whom our legal system derives) have been considering granting anonymity during trial for defendants accused of sex crimes, since even a false accusation can wreck someone's life completely, and accusations of rape or child abuse are more likely to result in vigilante action than accusations of murder.
Agreed, it seems like the root problem here is that mugshot data is being made publicly available for people who haven't been convicted of crimes. Being arrested is a far cry from being guilty of something.
It's very unclear what "public interest" is served by making these available in the first place.
I think having that information public in the moment is valuable in that it alerts a community to a possible danger and allows for the community to verify the indignity of the arrestee (for example if the arrested person is using an assumed identity or shares the same name as someone who has not been charged with a crime).
Now whether that data should be public for all time (especially for those who were not charged with a crime or found non guilty) is a different story.
A little slowness is not a bad thing from time to time. Until a person is proven guilty of a crime in a court of law, I don't think any details should be made public. Rumor has a way of destroying people, even when the rumor is false.
There is no such thing as information that is public "in the moment". Once data has been published, it can't be unpublished. Someone will have a copy, and will likely publish it on. This is particularly true wrt crime, there are plenty of armchair vigilantes who think that an arrest is proof of guilt and see nothing wrong with publishing arrest records of people they believe have "gotten away with it".
With this in mind, once a record of an arrest has been published, an official published record must persist, so that it can be linked with the outcome. Otherwise those who republish indiscriminately (or worse, those whose intent is to defame) will be able to define the "truth" as they see fit.
why the need for public access to a record of someone being arrested
It is intended to prevent secret arrests. It is absolutely sucky for individuals to have their arrests made public, but the consequences of enabling secret arrests would be terrible for the country as a whole.
Can you explain this? In Germany, where I live there are no public mugshots (in fact this is explicitly forbidden) and I am pretty sure that we don't have secret arrests. In which way do public mugshots prevent secret arrests? In case you want to arrest someone secretly, just don't publish the mugshot.
From the post: "The debate around fixing this problem has focused on whether the data should be removed from the public entirely"
I think this entirely misses the point. The point is that we should enforce, and to the extent needed, enhance, our blackmail and extortion laws to deal with these morally repugnant businesses. Under no circumstances should either the mugshot sites or a site like RipoffReport.com be able to solicit thousands of dollars under the threat that they will continue to disparage and embarrass their victims unless they pay. Google should not be helping these sites either - at least in the case of RipoffReport.com they are actually helping them carry out an extortion scheme against millions of people. Both the sites themselves and any site that helps them achieve their evil goals must be punished.
While I agree that these types of practices are repugnant, trying to put even more legal restrictions on speech seems to be a bit overkill for this problem.
I'd prefer to see the problem addressed at the source: mugshots should be kept under some form of copyright, in addition to being kept confidential at least until a person is convicted. The copyright would drive these extortion sites underground, reducing impact on peoples' reputations, and the confidentiality would make it difficult to maintain an extortion site by choking off the data supply.
While I agree with you in theory (I think these sites are disgusting) - their legal argument is that what they are doing isn't extortion, because it's not a case of "Pay us money or we publish" - because everything they have on their site has already been published and is public information
I think the best approach is shutting down the avenues of payment, so that we can eliminate any way for people to benefit from this behavior.
There is a very fine line between saying "I will publish if you don't pay" and "I will keep it online unless you pay". It's pretty clear that this doesn't violate the federal extortion statute, but these cases have not been tested against laws in all 50 states. I'd say the odds are pretty good that there is at least one state extortion statute written broadly enough to cover this type of behavior. All it takes is 1 prosecution in 1 state where there are victims to start taking big bites out of these sites.
On the other hand, there is something to be said for picking first names for your children from the list of 10 most common first names associated with your last name. "Free Viagra" is weird, but "Roberto Garcia" is (literally) super-normal.
Even if this is a policy failure that could be addressed in the future, isn't it also a self-regulation failure on the part of the search engines? Results like this could be pruned out under the same reasoning that punishes sites that hock sketchy pharmaceuticals. To illustrate, if I search for the trade name for a drug (just tried a few), the first-page results are pretty good. If I add 'Mexico' to that search, well, then I get what I get. It could be the same for 'mugshot'.
IMHO the problem isn't this information being public or even easily accessible. It's that people judge others based on this stuff which shouldn't be terribly relevant in most situations (anyone can get arrested, and even actual criminals are not always bad people. Especially if it's something minor or happened long ago.)
The people hosting this information to tarnish people's reputations in order to get them to pay are assholes. But the fact that your reputation can so easily be tarnished and that it matters so much is the root of the problem.
I mean if you really did believe the information was relevant and helped people make better decisions about others, you would want it to be public and easily accessible, right?
I was buying gas a month ago at a local grocery, when I saw this magazine put out by some small publisher.
It's basically a catalog of mugshots of local people and what crimes they were charged with. The cashier told me people love that stuff.
I'm not sure what words of wisdom I have to offer about the intersection of technology and this behavior, but I can assure you that widespread publishing of mugshots is not new.
The problem faced by this proposal is exactly what has so vexed content providers around DRM. Trying to add restrictions around technology that are not intrinsic to the grain of that technology turns out to be a hugely thorny problem.
Fun fact: I can get a record of your address and how you voted in every election you've been registered to vote for, in many states.
Funner fact: One of my friends used this to look up your address from your Facebook profile to see how far the bars you were talking about being at were from your home.
Which states provide data on how someone voted? Whether you voted in an election is normally provided, which provides party affiliation data for primary voters, but I'm not aware of any state that has done away with the private ballot.
* The surrounding context in which public data is presented (sort of the flip side, the "responsibility" side, of the coin whose other side is "collection copyright").
* The promotion of the data; for instance, the extent to which data is packaged to have higher rank on search engines (or, for that matter, its availability on search engines at all).
So it's not that mugshots aren't public data, so much as that there is public data that (a) shouldn't be packaged for search engines (Redditors, with their "no doxxing" policy, should have no trouble understanding this) and (b) shouldn't be packaged in ways that create bogus implications.
Mugshot sites do both.