Hi Larry, 

I think this is an excellent topic for discussion in this forum. How many
BILLIONS of public records are out there that contain anything from credit
card info, to home addresses and phone numbers, to SSNs? This has not
historically been a significant concern because of the effort required to go
to the courthouse, navigate the bureaucracy, find the information,
transcribe it or pay for copies, and so forth. As more organizations look to
image their existing paper and/or move to electronic records, this will
become more of an issue. 

Many states have already changed how this type of information is solicited
and managed moving forward, but there's still a ton of stuff out there. In
CO, for example, college IDs today use a generated number. As recently as
when I went to Metro State College of Denver (BA in political science,
2001), my ID was still my SSN with a leading 0. Tough security to crack,
that. 

As I think about it, the immediate implication will be an explosion of
identity theft, followed closely by an explosion of efforts such as those in
TX to either change the definition of "public record" or redact the
offending information. 

You say your program doesn't have the money to do that? The law eventually
will say otherwise. Every town has a gadfly whose purpose in life is to
ensure govt agencies adhere to the strict letter of the law - and they'll be
gunning for your program. 

NB: there are vendors who claim they can auto-recognize certain sensitive
data, most specifically the SSN, and auto-redact. No idea if it works or
not, but it might be one solution for one piece of the puzzle. 

Cheery thoughts on a gorgeous CO Friday, 

Jesse Wilkins
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