Historically that's more or less what we've done. A lot of things are public records, including things that many people might find surprising and personal, but in practice you had to track it down to some dusty town or county clerk's office that was only open occasional and unpredictable hours.
But as a result of a lot of things being digitized you can pay some nominal fee and get a pretty thorough public record search on anyone. Moving into a neighborhood, check out your neighbors. Potential employees. Etc. Heck, a lot of it is free although the "deep web" search companies have moved more to a straight pay model.
The problem is that I'm not sure how you reconcile "public record" and "must be really inconvenient to access" as a matter of statute. Public but may not be digitized? Public but you have to pay $10K to access it? Public but you need to get a court order for legitimate public right to know?
Historically that's more or less what we've done. A lot of things are public records, including things that many people might find surprising and personal, but in practice you had to track it down to some dusty town or county clerk's office that was only open occasional and unpredictable hours.
But as a result of a lot of things being digitized you can pay some nominal fee and get a pretty thorough public record search on anyone. Moving into a neighborhood, check out your neighbors. Potential employees. Etc. Heck, a lot of it is free although the "deep web" search companies have moved more to a straight pay model.
The problem is that I'm not sure how you reconcile "public record" and "must be really inconvenient to access" as a matter of statute. Public but may not be digitized? Public but you have to pay $10K to access it? Public but you need to get a court order for legitimate public right to know?