Today I learned that 20 years ago I was a defendant in an unlawful detainer (eviction) lawsuit regarding an apartment I shared in college. I had moved out of the apartment after graduation. Apparently my roommate stopped paying the rent and the landlord sued both of us. I was never served and didn't know about the case until now.
That's not true. Court records used to be accessible in person only. You would have to be motivated to find anything. This puts everyone's past and often forgotten transgressions on display.
This might look cool or even useful to some, but it's straight up immoral.
Court records, including traffic violations, have been accessible online in the jurisdiction where I live for nearly 25 years. They've been aggregated from that website by third-parties for most of that time, too (which I know because I've done contract sysadmin work for one of the courts for most of that 25 years).
You and others are essentially arguing that we should put artificial barriers in place for accessing information that is public as a matter of law. Arguably there is information that's public today only because the circumstances at the time when that decision was made were different. But the solution would be to make less information public if it's a problem. Not to tell people they can only access this information when the town clerk is in the office--and he doesn't come in much.
How does that work? Lawyers and others can run searches and have for decades. This isn't anything new, except now you don't have to pay a lot of money.
Either it's private or it's not. Fake throttling that discriminates based one's ability to pay or suffer inconvenience is ridiculous. Not to mention, it's been decades since this information hasn't been available in this format.
Mixed feelings on this, and a lot of it unfortunately stems from these systems requiring access in-person only as well as courts generally being inaccessible through FOIA. Had these records been available through FOIA from the beginning, for example, then these records would have gone through a review/redaction process. But, they're being released now, which can many ways be seen as a reaction to the lack of access to this information, generally. The extensive overuse of courts for non-violent cases definitely doesn't help either.
As a researcher, there are deep problems with the inaccessibility of court information in that it prevents the general public from learning about systemic issues, for example identifying extensive abuse by judges (singular, or in a group), or identifying whether bail is applied uniformly.
I don't know what the solution is and things get trickier the more you look at them. Restrictive access isn't a perfect answer, since it allows gatekeeping of those critical. Having talked with lawyers who have access, they basically have to keep completely out of public spot light while they have restrictive access, at the fear of losing it. And our massive systems around incarceration have shown themselves as being uninterested in providing information to those who are critical of them. We've dug ourselves into a pretty deep hole.
The documents being released are currently publicly available. It looks like records of minors either don't show up, or don't show details. It also looks like expunged convictions do not have the case showing up.
FOIA doesn't apply for two reasons. One is like you say - many court documents are considered privileged and not subject to FOIA (which I agree has many issues around things like complaints). The other is that documents that are publicly available like this don't need to be requested through FOIA since they are already available.
I can go to my state's website and get the same information as on this site. The thing this site does is allow you to search all state's for free. There are plenty of sites that will allow you to search for people like this, but they currently charge money.
Access to justice and information about justice shouldn't be gatekept through money. I understand where you're going with it, but it's very close to the same reasoning used to justify ex[tp]ensive bail -- it only fucks the poor.
"Access to justice and information about justice shouldn't be gatekept through money."
I agree. My comment was about how this site allows that access for free. And also that FOIA is moot for this information - it's publicly available without a request.
My point is that we should have gone through a FOIA route from the beginning.
And no, a lot of important information still isn't publicly available, so we still have these issues that need to be ironed out for the exact same reason as I'm describing. This release still only scratches the surface. I'm able to get court documents from city law departments, but the process takes forever (ten complaints per week, for example) and the alternative is to go downtown to work with computer systems that have poor search capabilities.
Had we been (and been able to be) aggressive from a FOIA perspective from the beginning, the inefficiencies of these systems (eg, segmentting private information is stored in court records) would be more ironed out.
"This might look cool or even useful to some, but it's straight up immoral."
Again, that's an issue with the legal system. States make this information available to the public online, and have done so for a long time. This is an aggregation, and similar services have been around for a long time.
If you want this information to be private, then you need legislation to be passed. Frankly, this isn't even the most immoral thing the system is involved in with. For example, 2-10% of the incarcerated are wrongly convicted. Or the fact that complaints and misconduct of judges are so secret that even if they contain exculpatory evidence they are not required to be exposed. Or that magistrates in most places are not required to have a law degree nor pass the bar, leading to the farcical outcome that the lawyers arguing the case have more knowledge of the law than the "judge" who is supposed to be the authority on the law. The list goes on and on. One day, enough people will be screwed over by the system that there won't be support for it anymore.
Technically no but it makes a difference if you have all that information available easily through the internet vs having to put some effort into obtaining the records one by one. Same goes for surveillance: technically you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public spaces but once it becomes feasible that somebody can plaster a whole state/country with cameras and can analyze the data automatically it gets a little scary. I think a lot of privacy rules need to be revised in the context of current and future technological capabilities.
There are records here connecting my legal name to my deadname, not even on a court name change order. I had gone to lengths to keep things private. This is devastating. I want to cry.
Emotional disregulation seems to be correlated with ADHD. I'm not sure if it's used as a diagnostic criteria, but people with ADHD discuss it frequently.
No idea. My point was to promote vaccination, even if there might be potential side effects in a small number of people. I accept that risk to help others. I’m not sure the vaccinations or physical injections are even the cause.
An ADHD diagnosis needs to be done by a neuropsychologist, who usually has a Ph.D. and specific board certifications. An anxiety disorder diagnosis is usually done by a psychiatrist, who is a doctor with an M.D. and specific psychiatry certifications.
There are several types of professionals who typically diagnose ADHD. These include: physicians (especially psychiatrists, pediatricians, neurologists), psychologists, social workers, nurse practitioners, and other licensed counselors or therapists (e.g. professional counselors, marriage and family therapists, etc.). [1]
Some examples of professionals who are capable of diagnosing ADHD include: pediatricians, psychiatrists, family physicians, nurse practitioners, psychologists, psychotherapists. [2]
I agree that it's both broader and more complicated than what I wrote. At least in some states in the U.S., a neuropsychologist can diagnose ADHD, but can't write prescriptions for medications to treat it. Meanwhile, a psychiatrist can write prescriptions for a patient with ADHD, but might only do so after he reads a diagnosis from a neuropsychologist. Your experience may vary.
Also, diagnoses for disability accommodations (e.g., in education) are a whole different and complicated thing.
That makes sense to me. Of course, I'm not disputing the existence of specialists. A nurse practitioner or pediatrician may not have the most familiarity or want to deal with the issue.
> “I have $6k in $AMC that’s like 90% of my money.”
That could be a lot of money to him, but it is not a lot of money compared to what an average worker earns in a year. A probably-young guy losing $6k on a risky stock bet is not life-destroying.
Also, depending on when he bought he could actually be up. And even if he bought at the top, it would still be worth something like 40% of that.
If you're in university, then you're probably in a place that has resources that can help. Take advantage of them. For example, you may have access to an occupational therapist who can help you improve how you organize and schedule your work, create effective workplace, avoid distractions, etc. Medication may also help, but it works best in conjunction with active behavioral changes.
There is no substitute for medication. For me a life without medication is a life of hating myself for not being able to do trivial things.
I tried all of those things you mentioned for over a decade and was often driven to tears trying to do simple things. I never did assignments for courses etc, causing some of my grades to stay bad even though I did great on the tests since tests kicks up your adrenaline making it easier to focus. Not because I didn't care about the grades but because I simply couldn't do the assignments. Then I got medication and suddenly everything in college and later work just became trivial. I stay on the lowest dosage and that is still enough for me to stay at normal levels of focus where I can program for a few hours a day when I need to do it to keep my job and earn money.
So, since medication has been so life changing for me I really hate when people say that you can manage ADHD symptoms just with lifestyle changes. Maybe in some cases, but many people absolutely need medication and discouraging such people from receiving it will ruin lives.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that it's possible to treat ADHD with just behavioral changes or occupational therapy. That wasn't true in your case and it wasn't true in my case either. In my case, medication has been eye-opening and life-changing. When I went back to school, however, I also found it helpful to work with an occupational therapist to set up specific strategies for staying organized, keeping up with assignments, effectively using my studying time, and minimizing distractions. Working with an OT who understood ADHD was different from just trying to adopt general studying strategies and it really helped me succeed in grad school. If the parent poster is in university, an OT may be an available resource.
If I regret anything, it's not getting diagnosed until I was in my 30s. I wasted years of my life doing poorly in school, being depressed about it, blaming my performance on being depressed, and then dropping out of school. I eventually graduated, only 10 years late and with a 2.2 GPA. After getting diagnosed and treated, I went to graduate school and finished in the top 15% of my class with a 3.7 GPA. I think I've redeemed myself, but I won't get any of those wasted years back.
