You might want to read this Editorial, and sent it to people in the state for why not to ban the C.A.B.I. George Published Sunday, Dec. 2, 2001, in the San Jose Mercury News EDITORIAL The opinion of the Mercury News It's not really Identitytheft.com Genealogy site pulls data purchased from the state off the Web, but access to it should not be narrowly restricted; there are other ways to protect privacy UNTIL Friday, you could go to RootsWeb.com and type a name of anyone born in California between 1905 and 1995. You'd get the person's birth date, county of birth and mother's maiden name. But two days after a hearing in Sacramento drew attention to the site, and incensed Californians protested that their privacy had been invaded,RootsWeb pulled the data. RootsWeb.com is a genealogy site. If you're into family history, it might save hours of traipsing from county to county looking for documents. If you're a news reporter, you could verify an official's r�sum�. If you're an adopted child, you might uncover the Rosetta Stone to your past. But if you're a crook, the site might help make somebody your mark. The California data told you where to go for a birth certificate, which is useful in obtaining a passport and applying for a job. Many banks use a mother's maiden name as a password, assuming strangers don't know it. That may have been a safe assumption, until RootsWeb.com bought 25 million Californians' birth records from the state for $900. For now, you too can buy the CD ROM for that price. But Sen. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, is calling on Gov. Gray Davis to halt the sale of the database. Davis should resist the pressure. RootsWeb.com simply made available, in one location and with one click, records that have always been available to those willing to scour for them. You can make a good case that the potential beneficial uses of the information outweigh the imagined harm of making it more accessible -- notwithstanding some people's gut reaction against seeing their mothers' names on the Internet. Even staunch privacy advocates disagree in this case. At the Senate hearing that brought RootsWeb.com to light, Speier said she'd introduce a bill to limit access to birth records, in order to discourage identify theft. Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Redondo Beach, the sponsor of a landmark identity theft bill the Legislature passed this year, said she saw no reason to. Let's wait for actual, not hypothetical, evidence of a problem, she said. Bowen got it right. Identity theft -- impersonating someone, usually to get a driver's license or credit card -- is a mushrooming crime. But fear of it shouldn't rationalize narrow access to public records. There are more effective ways to prevent identity theft, like regulating who gets copies of birth certificates or forbidding companies to use a maiden name as a password. A tension has always existed between individuals' privacy interests and people's right to public records. Until the emergence of data bases and the Internet, it was less of an issue. Most people didn't have the time to go through government files. With the Web, practical barriers are falling; governments are posting, and companies are buying and putting up, all kinds of records. There is personal information -- Social Security numbers, testimony in divorce cases -- that governments should not widely disseminate, in order to protect privacy and prevent identify theft. Government should ban companies from selling information they gather about individual customers without the customers' consent -- something the Legislature has refused to do. But the Internet itself doesn't alter the balance between privacy interests and the need to know. Public records hold government accountable and protect the public. Voting lists, mortgage liens, court records all have legitimate uses demanding public access. The burden on those who would restrict it must remain high. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Buy the perfect holiday gifts at Yahoo! Shopping. http://shopping.yahoo.com