MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin's open-records law was never meant to serve as a dating service, a longtime state lawmaker and privacy advocate argued yesterday in a debate over the merits of the state's online court-records system.
Too often the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access site, commonly known as CCAP, is used to snoop on people, like dating partners, said state Rep. Marlin Schneider, D-Wisconsin Rapids. In more serious cases it is also used to discriminate against job applicants or those looking for an apartment, he said.
"We should not bear false witness against our neighbors and CCAP does exactly that," Schneider said. "It convicts people in other people's minds even if they have done absolutely nothing wrong."
Schneider debated Bill Lueders, editor of Madison's alternative weekly newspaper Isthmus and president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council. The council organized the debate as part of its 30th anniversary celebration.
Lueders said the greatest power of the state was to charge people with crimes and that should not be kept secret.
"This information can be abused," Lueders said. "I just don't think the solution to that is to deprive people of access to these records."
The CCAP Web site has made county-by-county criminal and civil court records available since April 1999. Some records go back as far as three decades.
The Web site, http://wcca.wicourts.gov, lists detailed information about cases including court dates, convictions and sentences. While frequently used by attorneys, court officials and the news media, the site can be accessed by anyone.
It gets between 3.4 million and 3.9 million hits a day.
Schneider, a 38-year veteran of the state Assembly and a privacy advocate, received the Freedom of Information Council's "No Friend of Openness Award" for a bill he proposed last year in the Legislature to restrict who could have access to the CCAP records.
The bill, which did not pass, proposed to allow only police, judges, prosecutors and reporters to have access to the site.
"CCAP too many times requires you to prove your innocence over and over again even when you've done nothing wrong," Schneider said.
Lueders spoke out against another bill in the Legislature that would purge records from CCAP in cases where someone has been charged with a crime but the charges were dismissed or the person was found not guilty. Doing that would make CCAP a less comprehensive archive as well open the door to removing even more information from what is publicly available, he said.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson also spoke during yesterday's meeting on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. State law declares that meetings and records should be open, with some exceptions, in order for people in a democracy to act responsibly, she said.
"In Wisconsin the trademark of the state is openness, transparency in government and records," she said. "This is our hallmark and is understood by everyone. ... Let the sun shine in. Sunshine is a good disinfectant."
The Freedom of Information Council is a statewide group devoted to protecting Wisconsin's traditions of open government. It includes public members and representatives of various organizations, including the Associated Press, Wisconsin Broadcasters Association and Wisconsin Newspaper Association.