State can't charge $20 million for database (of Connecticut convicts for Hartford Courant)

AP via The News-Times [Danbury, CT] ^ | July 17, 2002 | Staff

[LurkedLongEnough]

(Hartford-AP, July 17, 2002 8:30 PM) _ The state Supreme Court ruled today that the Department of Public Safety cannot charge the Hartford Courant twenty million dollars for a database of criminal convictions.

The Hartford Courant requested a copy of the database in 1999.

The 850,000 [entries?] in the database give the names, dates of birth, addresses and criminal histories of those who have violated Connecticut law.

Public safety officials said the 20 million dollar price tag was based on a state statute that allows police to charge 25 dollars to search for an individual file.

The state Supreme Court says charging that much for every file in an electronic database undercuts the spirit of the state's Freedom of Information Law.

[LurkedLongEnough]

The book "Secrecy Wars - National Security, Privacy, & the Public's Right to Know" by Philip H. Melanson covers the history of the federal Freedom of Information Act from the point of view of a weenie academic from Massachusetts.

Although the book errs on the side of freely giving information to anyone who asks, including non-citizens and potential terrorists, in all fairness it also raises difficult questions about how to set the parameters of the Freedom of Information Act. The cost of FOIA, whether it's state or federal, is paid by the taxpayer and that can be a contentious issue depending on who's getting what.

I wonder what a such twisted newspaper in CT, The Hartford Courant, would DO with that database -- and what price it will eventually pay.

[attagirl]

Thanks for the post. I will ask for that FOIA book at our library. And yes, the Courant IS one of the worst!

Did you know that this whole Catholic Church scandal got to the headlines because the Courant got a hold of "sealed court records" of then Bishop Egan's testimony regarding diocesan priests.