Listing Details| ID: | 1978 |
| Title: | US Public Record - http://www.uspublicrecords.com |
| Description: | U.S. Public Records are those documents compiled by various public offices and agencies which are made available to the general public. Examples of public records include real estate records, lien filings, business entity filings, lawsuit information and court dockets, court decisions and death records - most of which is available on USPublicRecords.com |
| Category: | Society: People |
| RSS Feed: | Latest blog posts |
| Resources: | How records are collected Searching criminal records Guidelines on public record research |
| Added: | May 24, 2007 01:53:00 AM |
| Referrals: | 6 |
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| Latest feed from US Public Record Taking Control of the Digital World: Technology Has Let Us Reshape Our Lives, But With This Revolution Come Regrets This is the final Real Time column, and I'd like to use it to consider what I see as a dominant theme of our digital age, one that's emerged again and again in this year's columns.That theme is this: Wherever possible, we are taking control of our digital lives. When we see a new gadget or service that offers us greater control, we adopt it with disorienting speed, consigning old ways of doing things to oblivion and refusing to go back to the way things were. By taking control, we're becoming better organized, more efficient and better informed about what interests us. We have many more choices and the kind of power over our time that was the stuff of dreams not so long ago.But in taking control, we also enter a new world, one in which long-established business models have been rendered useless, and the old social interactions and rhythms of life have been replaced by new ones that aren't fully formed. That's an uneasy feeling, as if everything we took for granted turned out to be built on sand. Moreover, as with so many technological advances, the ability to take control is driving pressure to come along or get left behind.You can see this change at work in the way we consume information and entertainment, how we shop, and increasingly how we communicate.For more and more people that's now a portrait of a vanished world.Once the digital-music revolution gave us the ability to buy single songs (or, too often, to steal them), we took control of how we consume music, rejecting albums and upending the music industry. Once the DVR gave us the ability to find TV shows easily and record them without fussing with videocassettes, we started watching when we pleased; stopped caring which networks a show belonged to and skipped through the ads that pay for free TV.(And if we missed something, we looked for a streaming clip online the next day.)Once the Web let us find and read news whenever we wanted to, we turned our back on print papers and the evening news, replacing them with a patchwork of stories derived from a dizzying number of sources, some of which didn't exist just a few years ago.Many of us now listen to music, watch TV, and find news in radically new ways, and we aren't going back -- it increasingly strikes us as absurd to buy a CD to get one song, stay home at 9 on Thursday nights because that's when a show is first broadcast, or get our news from a single source. Do we care that our choices have thrown whole industries into chaos? Not in the least -- after years of doing things media companies' way, it's our turn. They'll do it our way, or get replaced.It's not just entertainment. The mall, grocery store and bookstore now compete with Web versions of themselves, ones that let us shop in the middle of the night and have things sent posthaste to our door. We expect all these retailers to compete on price and customer service, to deliver quickly, to take returns, and to do whatever it takes to satisfy us.How has our growing ability to take control of our digital lives changed us? Has that change been for better, or for worse? Join a discussion8 with me and other Online Journal readers. And it's not just commerce. Once our friends and family knew our phone number and called us on our home phones -- but people who were neither could look us up and do the same. Now we increasingly carry cell phones instead of using landlines, and we don't want our new numbers listed.We don't see the need, because even though we have phones all the time, we're also reachable via text messages and email and social-networking sites -- and in many situations we're coming to prefer those communications methods to the insistent, one-size-fits-some summons of a ringing phone. Sometimes we don't need to communicate directly at all -- we drop by our friends' Web pages, Facebook profiles or MySpace outposts to get the latest, and update ours so they can do the same.Soon enough we will take the next communications step, establishing a single link for those who want to get in touch with us. That will cement our control over our personal communications, and we'll decide to be findable again. Those we're close with will be able to reach us most anytime, with their communications funneled to wherever we are in whatever form we choose. Those we don't know will be able to send us a message, but we'll decide what to do with it, and what kind of access to grant.We've taken control every time we've had a chance to, but not without regrets. We worry that our local paper will disappear, that our mom-and-pop businesses won't be able to compete with Web entities, and that withdrawing into online communities will undermine our real-world neighborhoods. In taking control, we wonder if we're also making a smaller world for ourselves, one in which serendipitous encounters are less likely and our opinions reverberate in online echo chambers of our own choosing.And as has always been true with technological advances, the ability to take control drives the need to do so. Just as voice mail went from a curiosity to a must-have, cell phones and PDAs have made it so we're increasingly expected to be reachable -- on our own terms, perhaps, but reachable. Soon potential employers will find it odd, and perhaps even suspicious, if we don't have a Web page of our own -- and we'll feel compelled to have one, for fear that otherwise the information about us scattered across the Net will give the wrong impression.At least within the boundaries of mainstream tastes, those who sample only the TV governed by real-time schedules and the music available in physical stores will find themselves in an also-ran world of limited choices before too long. Add it all together, and those of us who haven't already opted to take control of our digital-era lives will increasingly feel compelled to do so.To be sure, most of us will be perfectly happy in this new world and glad to have control of it, just as we've been pleased to find alternatives to solicitors' dinnertime phone calls and holiday-shopping crowds and unlabeled videotapes of uncertain age. We'll have regrets, but for the most part we'll be too busy to get caught up in them. And soon enough even those will be softened and erased. We'll be hurtling along to new wonders, and will struggle to remember that things were ever different.Reference: online.wsj.com(PeopleSearches.com) and (USPublicRecords.com) and (BackgroundCheckDirectory.com) and (FreeSocialSearch.com) and (USPRS.com) and (IDTheftDefense.com) and (SecurityInformation.com) American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia - News Release Court Upholds Privacy Advocate’s Right to Post Public Records on Website Judge rules that new law prohibiting dissemination of Social Security Numbers is unconstitutional as applied to website of privacy advocate B.J. Ostergren.Richmond, VA - Federal Court Judge Robert E. Payne today ruled that Virginia’s new law prohibiting the publication of Social Security Numbers, including those taken from government websites available to the public, is unconstitutional as applied to the website of privacy rights advocate B.J. Ostergren.In his opinion the judge holds, that the new law, which was passed during the 2008 legislative session, cannot not be used to force Ostergren to remove Social Security Numbers currently on her website. However, the judge has asked for additional briefings from lawyers before deciding how the law might be applied to new information placed on the site.The ACLU of Virginia represents Ostergren, who runs a website that advocates against making personal information available on the internet. Her website, TheVirginiaWatchdog.com, contains public records obtained from government websites that include the Social Security Numbers of public officials. By posting these documents, Ostergren hopes to prod government policy makers to take action to prevent Social Security Numbers from being posted online.“No one wants to protect Social Security Numbers more than the ACLU and B.J. Ostergren, but the government can’t carelessly put Social Security Numbers online and then tell the public what they can and cannot do with those numbers,” said ACLU of Virginia Executive Director Kent Willis. “That’s censorship, and the court was quick to recognize that.”“In the end, it appears this law was passed not for the purpose of protecting Social Security Numbers but to silence a critic of the state’s failure to protect such numbers from identity thieves,” added Willis.In his opinion, U.S. District Court Judge Robert E. Payne wrote: “It is difficult to imagine a more archetypal instance of the press informing the public of government operations through government records than Ostergren’s posting of public records to demonstrate the lack of care being taken by the government to protect the private information of individuals.”Under Virginia law, circuit court clerks in Virginia are required to make all land records available on the internet. Land records are made up of deeds and mortgage information, but may also include legal judgments, such as divorce decrees, that contain Social Security Numbers and other personal information. The purpose of Ostergren’s website is to pressure state officials to protect Social Security Numbers by showing how easy it is for her—and anyone else—to obtain them.ACLU of Virginia Legal Director Rebecca K. Glenberg argued the case for Ostergren. A copy of the judge’s opinion can be found online at http://www.acluva.org/docket/pleadings/ostergren_opinion.pdf.Contact: Kent Willis, 804/644-8022Reference: .acluva.org(USPublicRecords.com) and (BackgroundCheckDirectory.com) and (IDTheftdefense.com) and (PeopleSearches.com) and (USPRS.com) and (FreeSocialSearch.com) and (SecurityInformation.com) The 2008-2009 Talking Phone Book® Is Here, Featuring Pirate Radio 1250 & 930 on the Cover 08-27-2008 The 2008-2009 Greenville Area Talking Phone Book has hit the streets allowing area residents to get all the information they need in one handy book.The directory is currently being delivered free of charge to local homes and businesses.The cover of this year’s phone book features Troy D. and Ellerbe from Pirate Radio 1250 & 930.The Talking Phone Book is proud to partner with Pirate Radio as they bring the Greenville area another exciting season of ECU Pirate football this fall.The Talking Phone Book covers Greenville and Pitt County as well as parts of Greene County in one easy-to-use directory.The Talking Phone Book contains complete white and yellow page telephone listings, ZIP codes in the white AND yellow pages, valuable community information such as a new residents’ guide, area maps, money-saving coupons and much more! The Talking Phone Book also offers users large, easy-to-read print.The Talking Phone Book is pleased to announce that an electronic version of the directory is now available at talkingphonebook.com. You can view and/or download the book directly to your home or work computer for white and yellow page listings and all the great features found in the printed book at the click of a mouse.Information is also searchable at talkingphonebook.com. Perfect as a home page, talkingphonebook.com has everything you find in the book and more: - local business and People Searches, e-mail, reverse phone number search, web searches, local weather and more!Additional copies of The Talking Phone Book are available at the Greenville-Pitt County Chamber of Commerce office in Greenville.About White Directory Publishers, A Division of Hearst Holdings, Inc.: White Directory is one of the largest U.S. based independent publishers of print and online yellow pages directories in the country. Shaping an industry since 1968, White Directory has been publishing the nationally-known, award-winning Talking Phone Book for 40 years and continues to connect buyers and sellers through its multi-media suite of print and digital products. The Company publishes nearly 80 directories in 11 states as well as providing Internet yellow pages, SEM, video and direct marketing solutions for its advertisers. Acquired by the Hearst Corporation in 2004, White Directory also publishes 12 books under the Area-Wide brand in Texas.For more information, visit http://www.talkingphonebook.com/Reference: carolinanewswire.com(PeopleSearches.com) and (USPublicRecords.com) and (BackgroundCheckDirectory.com) and (USPRS.com) and (FreeSocialSearch.com) and (IDTheftDefense.com) and (SecurityInformation.com) |