Common Sense Journalism

The problem with "raw" data online

By Doug Fisher

As I write this, South Carolina's Legislature is about to block public access to the state's concealed weapons permits.

The bill's sponsor cited a Roanoke, Va., newspaper's posting of that state's concealed weapons permit database online one year ago. (The paper took the data down after a public outcry, and Virginia quickly put the database under wraps.)

Brant Houston, then director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, laid out the argument for keeping the records open in 2004 in News Media and the Law magazine. It's important to be able to report on the use of concealed weapons by felons and domestic abusers, he said. It's also important to check how the permitting process itself is operating.

Keeping those records secret, Houston said, "doesn't make any sense . . . especially when you're dealing with dangerous weapons."

But just as dangerous a weapon to freedom of information might be the proclivity, as newsrooms become "information centers," to throw anything and everything online. If it moves, digitize it.

Generally, data are good. They let people go beyond what we can tell them in a story. They can find information they need or develop their own data-driven narratives, much like the Knight-funded Everyblock project now does in New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

Much of the information that flows from the government's gathering and production of data needs to be in the open and easy for people to use.

Heretical as it may be in some quarters, however, some information might best be left offline to preserve some public (yes, read journalists') access. (The South Carolina Press Association offered such a compromise as it tried to keep some access to concealed weapons permits. A few years ago, Ohio came to a similar, if imperfect, compromise; a "journalist" may view permit information ­– but cannot copy it.)

Databases with private identifying information are so sensitive that if we don't think things through, we risk losing not only the battle but also the war. A significant chunk of the public, besieged by reports of identity theft and threats to privacy, is more likely to see these things not as public service, but as privacy invasion.

"The freedom of information act," as one person commented on a blog during the Roanoke outcry, "is a necessary evil" -- hardly a ringing endorsement and a position I suspect is more common than we know.

Another wrote: "If a crook had to go to the courthouse or the State Police to request this information, he or she would be far less likely to do so. But now that the information is so readily obtainable to the anonymous individual, it's easy for any goon to go to the library, get on the Web and prepare his or her new hit list."

It's the embodiment of what design consultant Ed Heninger calls the "cuzican" problem – just 'cuz I can doesn't mean I should. It also touches one of the digital dilemmas I've written about before in describing our research into newspaper archives and ethics questions: Stripped of "practical obscurity," many things that haven't been issues are likely to become so in the digital world. One is tossing raw, personally identifying data online where it loses the obscurity of being sequestered in a newspaper morgue. That has some legal scholars re-examining notions of privacy and liability and some legislators seeing opportunity.

West Virginia, for instance, also is considering hiding its concealed weapons data, though for now that seems to have stalled. Numerous other states already keep the information secret.

Like Roanoke, The (Nashville) Tennessean, put Tennessee's concealed weapons data online last year, only to pull it down after a public outcry.

In Hartsville, S.C, people on the community news site I run with the Messenger newspaper have complained about printing the police blotter. Rarely, they say, do papers update when people are cleared. In the digital age, where the damning information can live forever, they may have a point.

Michigan's Lansing State Journal took tremendous heat, including a scathing "open" letter from the state's chief justice, for putting state workers' names and salaries online. I think those records that get to the heart of government operations need to be accessible. The paper stood its ground, but said it all in one of its later headlines: "More context needed with database launch."

And that's the key question – do we need the data, or the information?

In Tennessee, where permit data remain public for now, a Knoxville TV station did not throw the records online. But in November, WBIR posted stories and maps so that people can search by census tract to find how many permits are in their area. Other census data give some perspective. No result pinpoints a specific person, and I've not heard of any outcry.

Investigative producer Jake Jost wrote:

"Ultimately, this story is about fostering dialogue on a topic close to all of us: safety. ...

This story was possible only through Tennessee's open records laws. There has been talk in recent years of the legislature closing the record on handgun carry permits. ...

An intelligent debate over policy is unlikely without good information. Without strong public records laws, we can't provide you with good information."

And if we rush online with every bit of data "cuzican," we may do those laws irreparable harm.

Doug Fisher, a former AP news editor, teaches journalism at the University of South Carolina and can be reached at dfisher@sc.edu or 803-777-3315.