Leftwing Newspaper Gone Too Far?

[Tiberius]

Um, lets not confuse issues here.

I don't believe I was.

ALL public documents are just that "public" and as such the concept of transparency has been a valued concept since the founders. The idea is to have the ability to hold government accountable, thus we make transactions with government public.

I know that public documents are public...it's kinda in the title. The concept of transparency is for government actions...not that of citizens. The privacy of citizens is also a valued concept. The government should be transparent on policy and its business transactions...but not when it grants a citizen some license. In my country, we have a national health service. I would be appalled if someone could simply do an information request for everyone with a specific prescription. Want to find out how many people are on anti-depressants? Sure, here are the details!

There are some things which should remain private, and anything that is invasive to a person's private life should be.

NOW having said that, my problem isn't that government documents are public, THEY SHOULD BE, but the tactic of "outing" at that mass scale is what I object to.

Then you have a contradiction on your hands. You cannot support these documents being public, but then object to when they are published publicly. Why? Because as I said before, anyone could have done this. There is no real difference between one newspaper filing one information request and then passing the information onto its readers, and all the readers individually filing information requests for the same information.

If information is already public, it is already outed on a mass scale.

I don't care if they were publishing abortion doctor's offices(which are a matter of public record) just like an apartment or house you live in is also on the public file.

Abortion offices are providing a public service...they have to be public. I'm not so sure about living addresses; I don't think you should just be able to publish where someone is living.

I do care that the public trust was violated, that is the issue. What that Newspaper was NOT illegal, but it was immoral. That was an abuse of "the freedom of information act", which was not the intent that law was put in place for.

I never said it was illegal.

They damaged all citizens rights and also sent a message to potential whistle blowers that the media does not have to value privacy rights.

When has the media ever valued privacy rights?

IT DEPENDS on why a record is being accessed. Not that it is public. This was an abuse of power, not a public records issue. Public records have to be kept in civil society and access to them should not be either always or never, but make the case on a case by case issue. This Newspaper decided for all of us what rights we should have, and NO ENTITY public or private should be allowed to do that.

Again, there are some records which should be public, and others which shouldn't. Doctors records should not be public, neither should the list of licenses for anything. A person should not have to sacrifice their privacy in order to buy something.