Busted! Offenders Adds Sex Offender Registry Information from Sacramento, California

These subscription type sites have been around for a while… the site that was recently sued in Federal Court is different in that it

a) knowingly publishes persons no longer / never were required to register
b) charges a fee for removal (as opposed to a fee for access to what is arguably public information)

That is how I understand it. That is not to say that someone should not sue this site for generating revenue with someone’s likeness without their express consent.

Well, I’m not sure how this got the attention. There are plenty of other Websites that provide many or all criminal records and for a price. They handle this stuff similar to how credit agencies handles your credit reports, selling YOUR information for their profit. This one is no different.

They claim to have it direct from Sacramento police info — but that just means off the Website, and they aggregated with whatever other info they have on the people. These places for decades have had people at all the courthouses collecting info from all the filings — and aggregate it and sell the info. It is not always very accurate. Some have gotten certain information direct from certain agencies, such as police, too.

In fact, one of the worse, Western Goals, which is known as a John Birch Society group, was a major collector of this kind of info and was mixed up in the 1980s in a big scandal involving LAPD handing over all its SPYING and booking records to Western Goals. Now, consider: with that for background, about 10 years ago, the FBI has now turned over all its criminal record keeping to — Western Goals! Yes. The FBI no longer keeps the records itself, It has turned that function over to Western Goals, which keeps a basic index, and links to ALL the state Justice Departments for the full record behind that index. So, everyone arrested, whether charged or not, whether convicted or not, have their record turned over to the private, and fanatically right wing, Western Goals.

At least this one in this story only gives the info to people who are willing to pay. The SOR online list is free to anyone who wants to go to the Website!