Make sale of state data a crime?

Utah lawmakers, seeking ways to keep government information about individuals out of the hands of profiteers, are considering making it a crime to peddle such personal data.

But the latest effort to restrict access to government information may run afoul of First Amendment rights, an attorney says.

On Wednesday the Legislature's Government Operations Committee will consider the possibility of running legislation criminalizing the sale or receipt of certain government information.

The proposal, pushed by Salt Lake County Recorder Gary Ott, would make it a class C misdemeanor for anyone to receive information from government records and then sell it.

Although he's not seen the draft legislation, media attorney Jeff Hunt said the idea raises troubling constitutional questions about hampering commercial speech and interfering with journalists' rights to lawfully gather information.

"Wow, that's pretty frightening," Hunt said. "Commercial speech is entitled to constitutional protections. If someone takes generally public information like names and addresses and sells that and that becomes a crime, that would constitute First Amendment problems."

But Ott says the law is needed to deter producers of mass mailing lists from taking advantage of the state's open records law, called the Government Records Access and Management Act.

Kansas, he said, passed a similar law last year.

"It seems to be working very well for them, so we are following suit," Ott said.

Members of the committee heard the concept of the legislation in April's meeting. At 9 a.m. Wednesday in Room 405 of the Capitol, the committee will see draft legislation on the proposal. No legislator has volunteered to sponsor the bill.

Because government collects such a vast array of information, Ott says certain businesses make it a routine practice to cull records and then sell the personal data for profit.

Hawkers of magazines, carpet cleaning companies and others are willing to pay big bucks for records on 300,000 parcels of land, tracking down personal information on property owners.

"There are people who come to this office every day and pull up data. That is all they do. It is a big industry across the nation and people use all manner of approaches."