Council public-records study not secret

On Oct. 25, the Utah Judicial Council will release for public scrutiny, critical analysis and comment a report with proposed rules balancing the right of privacy and the right of access to court records. The Judicial Council encourages informed debate on these issues, and the Deseret Morning News editorial from last Monday, "Keep court records open," contains inaccuracies that may impede that debate.

The editorial states that the committee appointed to study these issues "believes there is a big difference between a paper report and an electronic one." The committee's proposals draw no distinction between paper and electronic records. Public records are public records, regardless of format. Anyone can walk into a courthouse and ask to see a court file. If it's public — and most of them are — the clerk will provide it. Anyone can use the courts' Xchange record retrieval service and download court records through the Internet.

Neither are the committee members "in a frenzy to seal up information that has been public for decades." The committee recommends expanding procedural protections for the public when a request is made to seal a record. For the most part, the committee recommends no changes to the classification of public records. The sole area in which the committee recommends greater security is for some personal identifying information, and even here much remains public.

And the committee is not keeping its work secret "so as to not generate a lot of messy public debate." The committee encourages informed debate. That's why we opened our meetings to anyone who wanted to attend, including the press. That's why we invited stakeholders, including the press, to present their opinions and recommendations. That's why we posted our minutes on the courts' Web site and sent most of our working materials to anyone who asked.

But informed debate is not as one-sided as the editorial portrays. For example, the unrestricted access urged by the Deseret Morning News means that a juror's address, telephone number, driver's license number and Social Security number (for these are among the courts' records) would be reported on the Internet. The committee, recognizing that the privacy of the people who do business with the courts is just as important a right as access to records, recommends no change to the current law that keeps such information private.