Panel backs limits on records access

A committee whose task is to balance the privacy rights of individuals but maintain the openness of court records has released its latest draft report, which recommends that certain records be available on paper but not electronically.

The draft will be discussed at today's meeting of the Committee on Privacy and Public Court Records and currently is only a preliminary document. There are several opportunities for it to be changed and modified between now and when it is ultimately adopted by the Utah Judicial Council.

The committee, which will submit its final report to the council Oct. 25, has spent two years researching this and related topics.

Some committee members have expressed reservations about releasing any draft reports rather than the final and finished copy of their recommendations. Other committee members favored making drafts open to the public to assist in community dialogue about these topics.

A key issue that has prompted spirited debate among committee members is how to handle requests for mass (or "aggregate") records from the media or other groups such as market research companies.

News organizations have been lobbying to open aggregate records through electronic means so they can analyze trends and do in-depth research and reporting. For example, a request could be made to get electronic copies of all DUI convictions in Utah in the past year.

Currently, that information is not available electronically, and the committee's latest draft report recommends things stay that way.

However, such records are public documents when they are in paper form — and can be obtained when requested on an individual basis.

"Aggregate records — the database — is itself a record, and whether it is open or closed is determined by the same balancing of interests as for individual records," the latest draft report said. "The United States Supreme Court has held that privacy interests are at their highest when the record being considered is a compilation of other records, and that the compilation can be closed even though the individual records are open."

Attorneys Jeff Hunt and David Reymann, who represent the Deseret Morning News, The Spectrum, The Herald Journal, KSL-TV, the Utah Press Association and the Utah Headliners Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, disagree with this provision of the draft report.