Sounds like a remarkably ineffective way to hide anything. Google "public notice"+site:.gov . Should be rather simple to set up publicnotices.org (or
Publishing in the Pierce County Herald, on the other hand...
"Sure, nobody reads newspapers anymore but at least they are saved in the public library for just about all time. "
Only a geek would say that. A lot of people still read the newspaper, either their own or the libraries copy. If anything's to be hidden it's from those who don't have internet access.
Local government websites are some of the most poorly designed and hardest to navigate.
I second you on that!
Take for instance the home page for Tuttle, Oklahoma: http://mirror.centos.org/mirrorscripts/noindex\_new.html [centos.org]
That single page is so bloody cluttered and difficult to navigate that the Oklahoma City Manager (who is an very important pesron!) had difficulty with it. See http://www.centos.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=127 [centos.org]
Quotes from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Written by Douglas Adams
"BEWARE THE LEOPARD"
"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."
Why not do like everyone else and move these classifieds to Craigslist? It's public, divided by region, etc.
Here's the biggest problem with doing it online though: archiving. You're local library doesn't have a complete history of your city council's Web site or local Craigslist.
If you are going to criticize the troll at least try to get the name right, Linus Torvalds created the Linux kernel.
You've fundamentally missed the point. It's not about public vs. private, it's about placing the notice in a place that general citizens would have a reasonable chance of running across it in daily life. Unless your (and everyone's) daily web surfing involves checking government web sites every day, you're not going to see these notices. Even if *your* habits might bring you across it, 99.9\% of other people won't. The point of having it in the newspaper is that most people (in the past) would be reading the paper for other reasons, and then just happen to stumble across the notice. THAT is the point.
Vogon ships have been sited heading towards Earth.
Firefox has an extension called Scrapbook [mozilla.org] that allows you to save to your cache entire copies of a webpage without saving screenshots to your hard drive. Your browser automatically downloads all pages from a website within a link depth that you set, and you can direct the process to be restricted to one domain.
I spidered www.whitehouse.gov on January 20 and January 21, 2009 to a link depth of 3. I wish I remembered to do the same thing with Blagojevich's webpages before they were changed.
Would the notices be "published" in some archivable form? Or would they be subject to continual revision and modification?
Back in the 60s (70s?) My grandparents had the government dig them a lake and stock it with fish so they could use it for their drinking water. The stipulation: advertise the fact the lake was there and stocked with fish. Their solution: Advertise in the chicago tribune. They had a small farm about 25 miles southeast of st louis. Like anybody seeing that ad would drive all the way down there for a small lake and fishing. Sounds like something similar.
If you watch this [youtube.com], you must uninstall linux for life.
Get off my Internet, kid.
I mean how would you like it if you were caught in a situation where you didn't have access to public information?
VOGON CAPTAIN: [On Speakers] People of Earth your attention please. This is Prostectic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planet Council. As you no doubt will be aware, the plans for the development of the outlying regions of the western spiral arm of the galaxy require the building of a hyperspace express route through your star system and, regrettably, your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes thank you very much.
MANKIND: [Yells of protest]
VOGON CAPTAIN: There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaints and its far too late to start making a fuss about it now.
MANKIND: [Louder yells of protest]
VOGON CAPTAIN: What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh for heaven sake mankind it's only four light years away you know! I'm sorry but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that's your own regard. Energise the demolition beams! God I don't know...apathetic bloody planet, I've no sympathy at all...
The Earth is destroyed in a huge explosion.
Today when you register a corporation you are required to post this fact in one or more newspapers or other similar publications.
Not in all states, Colorado for instance...
"Yes M'lud. It was our junior IT admin who got the robots.txt wrong and put the IP filtering on the webserver by mistake.
No M'lud we didn't realise it would would mean that only we could see the notices or even know they existed.
Anyway, it's all to late now as the compulsory purchase orders have gone through and there wasn't anybody in the houses who wanted to object anyway."
Trust Google to sort it out - yeah great plan. Sigh.
[quote]Sure, nobody reads newspapers anymore but at least they are saved in the public library for just about all time.[/quote]
At the end of the month our library tosses the newspapers out. We subscribe to a database product which provides archived and indexed full text articles.
Just watch, before long they'll be posting public notices by leaving them in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.
Today when you register a corporation you are required to post this fact in one or more newspapers or other similar publications. Often these notices are rather expensive to post as they are not simply standard classified ads.
Similarly, there are requirements for stock offerings and such. As well as government contract opportunities.
Sure, nobody reads newspapers anymore but at least they are saved in the public library for just about all time. You want to find something? There is a place to look. And, for the most part, this historical record is a trustworthy one.
Who, exactly, is archiving government web site content like this? Nobody, that's who. We are hell-bent on destroying any possibility of records for the future, and I have no idea why we are so firmly set on this as a goal. Easier? Sure it is. More relevent? Maybe. But there is no way that most of the digital information today is being archived in a meaningful manner, and what there is that is being archived has a very, very low signal to noise ratio, or perhaps more accurately for the Internet, a rather high noise to signal ratio.
Certainly the US is so firmly focused on entertainment today that newspapers and meaningful news doesn't stand a chance. It isn't entertaining and attempts to make news entertaining are usually grotesque paradies of reality.
Beyond newspaper economics, critics are concerned that the shift would allow government officials to effectively hide their activities from scrutiny.
Well lets be honest there was no better place to hide news than in local newspapers, they were intended to wrap up chips (US: fries) not for reading . . .
Stallman isn't Linux - he's part of the Gnu herd....... Good God, not only did you flub the url, but you don't even know who the hell you're talking about.
Let's try this - Linux - Linus - Linux - Linus. Linux was created by Linux Torvalds, NOT by the old bearded bull with nasty feet.
Today when you register a corporation you are required to post this fact in one or more newspapers or other similar publications. Often these notices are rather expensive to post as they are not simply standard classified ads.
Similarly, there are requirements for stock offerings and such. As well as government contract opportunities.
Sure, nobody reads newspapers anymore but at least they are saved in the public library for just about all time.
Actually, the notice requirement varies by locality. I've registered DBA's and have worked with others registering corporations in Los Angeles County. There are actually publications whose sole reason for existing is to publish such legally mandated announcements, and I have yet to see one anywhere. The last one I used (three weekly pubs for my most recent DBA) was done by filling out a web form online and paying forty bucks by credit card. My proof of publication was three dated photocopied sheets of a crude looking advertisement and a receipt from the publisher. It's nothing you'd ever find in a library, that's for sure. I have no freakin' clue where this little rag was publicly available, but the county recorder accepted it. It's all a sham, now. A vestigial organ long since outlived its purpose. I say get rid of it.
Working journalist here...
Public notices are a Good ThingTM, but there is no real journalistic scrutiny as a result of them appearing in a newspaper; or anywhere else for that matter.
Most of the stuff that's required to print as public notice out here is liquor license applications, articles of incorporation, DUI checkpoint locations and open meeting schedules (not even the minutes).
If I did my job based only on what public notices and press releases I received from the government, I'd never get anywhere at all.
As a journalist, you learn pretty early on that the story usually isn't what the government IS telling you, it's what it ISN'T telling you.
That being said, the government should be required to make public notices available somewhere accessible (general rule of thumb is available at the library and beyond) because people might want to know about a new liquor license being issued or the city council meeting schedule.
But that's not really where the stories come from. It's one of the few remaining "easy money" opportunities for the newspapers.
One thing that would be a big negative about this is the public notices of bankruptcy and foreclosure sales that are currently published. Usually those go by unnoticed and are never seen again. Generally there is not a way now, unless you can pull a credit report for a valid reason, to find out if someone (employee, friend, tenant) has had those. If they went online, they would instantly become permanently public and searchable (regardless of robots.txt, etc, some website will scrape it if there is $$$ demand).
I'm not bringing that up because I think people should be able to hide a bankruptcy or foreclosure. They are on your credit report for 7-10 years, but after that they are dropped and it's as if you have never had bankruptcy. In the meantime, landlords and employers can pull your credit report. If the notices are online, the landlords and employers can search that and see if you had something bad happen 15, 20 years later and illegally use that in their consideration. (Right now they're required to tell you why they take adverse action from a credit report, but public notices fall outside of those laws.)
Bankruptcy and foreclosure are design to help someone who would otherwise be destitute for life get back on their feet for the public good. Permanent, public, searchable records of those would only hurt that.
In some cities, there are still too many people who rely on public notices in print format.
Also, there should be an "official write once" record of all such notices deposited somewhere. This doesn't have to be print, microfilm, CD, or whatever.
If the "official write once" version is not made at the time of the online version, then a signed hash of the online version should be published in write-once format at the time the online version is made, so there's no chance it could be silently edited.
For example, how the Vogons managed to get away with hiding that demolition notice in some planning department out in Bum Fuck, Alpha Centauri.
Rob
Sigh. Old or young who has time to figure out what is going on? That's what we rely on officials for.
If they're not reliable, then don't pay taxes
I think this is just part of the general shift towards everyday interaction over the web. For example, a number of companies that I buy services from will only send physical bills to me if I make a special request.
In general I think this is a good thing, as it highlights the growing importance of net neutrality and universal access. As more necessities of life move online, the more people will concern themselves with these issues.
While I agree to a point, unless you are going to take most of the local papers and make them government run subsidies the simple fact is papers are going the way of the 8-track. Nobody reads the things anymore, and with good reason. if your town is big enough to have a local paper, it is big enough to have corruption in office. I want to know which wildcat natural gas bunch is paying off the county to get away with their nasty way of drilling. I want to know who gave a check to the judge that pulled an imminent domain BS when one of the local residents didn't want his land drilled on and refused to sell mineral rights. I want to know why half of the cops live in trailer parks while the other half live in McMansions while their wives drive Lincoln Navigators.
So I picked up the local paper a couple of weeks back to see if they had grown some balls and did any actual reporting. Nope, even the natural gas tank explosion that killed 4 was nothing but a press release by the company. All we get in our local paper is the same old Ap crap and the only local "news" is who died and which bunch is having a bake sale. Is it any wonder nobody reads the thing? I can get that from Yahoo for $0.00! And last week sitting at the doc's for my checkup I noticed the state paper, which I also heard was in trouble. Picking it up and glancing through it I knew why. Lord save us from the spin!The thing had become so right wing I was surprised they didn't have a "How to break them damned muzzies" By Dick Cheney section. Every story that had anything to do with repubs sounded like "4 alarm fire makes way for GLORIOUS new tractor factory!" while anything Dem was Pelosi=traitor Obama=dangerous fool, etc. Again not a damned local story except who died and who was having a bake sale. Why would I pay for that?
So while I agree we need something that is gonna be archived and available, newspapers ain't it. The reason they are dying is because frankly most of them suck. Maybe we should have a "notices.org" which is divided by state and is archived daily by the Internet Archive(for a small fee, of course) to where we could find out at a glance any notices that may or may not affect us. Because as it is now, you might as well be printing those notices on the dark side of the moon in 8 pt type for all the folks that are actually reading it. Hell even my 67 year old dad, who is a total Luddite, has picked up a cheap laptop so he can sit on his couch and "read the paper" as he puts it by going to his Yahoo home page. Nobody is willing to spend money for the same old AP crap printed on dead trees. And after reading my local and state paper I can't say I blame them. Hell it isn't even worth the time to look at, much less actually paying money for it.
This shouldn't be allowed. Public notices in newspapers serve two purposes. The first is the one mentioned, publishing the notice where interested parties can see it. The second isn't mentioned, though, and that's to create a record of the notice outside the control of the party required to post it. The notice can't be changed later, can't be quietly made to never have happened. We've already seen entities change stories posted on their Web sites when what was in those stories became inconvenient later. Yes, it's going to cost a little extra to maintain that independent record of the notices. When we make a big payment or an important one where not making it has big consequences, it definitely costs for them to give us a receipt that we can use later to prove we did pay and what we paid for. We don't accept the cost savings as a valid reason for not being given a receipt, we don't accept "Trust us, we've got a record of your payment.".
Why doesn't the government set up a specific website, such as publicnotice.gov, and require the use of that?
Governments all over are already using internet web services such as BidSync to post their bids in lieu of other methods for public notice.
I'd much rather have a single website to review than classified ads which may never make it online.
Maybe there's a more elegant solution to my 5-second thought above, but we can't keep using local newspapers. It's practically a monopoly-type service for newspapers (public notices run about $200 or more in a small city because there is no competition), and one that will soon fall apart when these organizations die.
"Appropriate time?" hooted Arthur. "Appropriate time? The first I knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I asked him if he'd come to clean the windows and he said no he'd come to demolish the house. He didn't tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me."
"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a torch."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."
This is a good thing, but it has to be done right. Like the SEC's EDGAR system.
EDGAR now has a user-friendly interface and a search engine, but underneath is a huge collection of raw SGML files accessible via FTP. These files stay up forever and their names and contents do not change. Many big services (Bloomberg, EDGAR Online, Google, etc.) grind through that data every day. One of my systems, Downside [downside.com], does it too. There's no charge for access, bulk downloads are supported, and the raw filings are accessible. That's the way it should work.
What you don't want is something you can only access through a search engine, with some of the information on a pay site. A bad example is Delaware's corporate record system.
So the minimum standards for a public records system that replaces publication should be comparable to those maintained by EDGAR.
by posting to their own govt websites than by hiding them by not posting a classified at all?
Newspapers lost their credibility along with the rest of the media "watchdogs" in the run up to the Iraq debacle. The only ones that made any attempt at keeping anyone honest were the bloggers who were derided as losers living in their folks basement eating cheetos (as opposed to writing in a cubicle eating cheetos).
I have the unique position of being formally employed by a newspaper business, and now do contracting work for the government (which is why I logged in as "AC"). Public notices are ONLY about the money that they bring in, and the expense is not small for the various entities that are forced to comply. The agency I work for (which is not large), spends OVER $250,000 a year complying with these requirements. This is money that ultimately comes out of our pockets, and into the albeit swindling coffers of the newspaper industry.
I bet Craigslist would be thrilled to offer free "legals", and they can be physically posted at the city halls, libraries etc., and added to the
Its all about the money. Shut the lights out will you... its over.