It’s never a good idea to break the law, but even more so in Pinellas County, Florida, where citations for minor infractions have been posted online with personal information like social security numbers available to the public. A local news station looked into the problem after a resident noticed his social security number on a citation for illegally parking his boat on a street. The station looked up his citation and found that his SSN was redacted, but the question prompted them to search through more records.
The station picked random days from the past year and found that 28 of the 102 citations they examined contained unredacted social security numbers. They found instances of the same social security number showing up unredacted in multiple citations and found numerous examples of out of towners who received open container citations during spring break with their personal information exposed.
County Clerk Ken Burke was surprised to hear that the personal information was available because they have an automated redaction solution and dozens of employees working to redact documents every day. Regardless, Burke was thankful for being made aware of the issue and is working with his third-party vendor to create a resolution.
To avoid this issue altogether, Burke is hoping for a revision of the non-criminal citation form to exclude social security numbers. They shouldn’t be necessary given other publicly identifying information available on the form such as an address.
Automated redaction can be an incredibly valuable tool for counties that want or need to post documents like criminal and land records online. Oftentimes, county offices will have to do more than just keep up with the regular inflow of documents as new legislation (such as California’s AB 1466 addressing discriminatory restrictive covenants) can require offices to look back on the entirety of their records.
Because of the stakes though, it’s important that county officials ask the right questions of their redaction vendor to keep their constituents’ identities safe. Many counties decide to go through an RFP process to better detail and receive extensive feedback regarding their workflow and vendors’ capabilities. It’s crucial that counties understand how accurately their documents can be analyzed and have appropriate verification and QA processes in place.
If you’d like to get a better sense of what automated redaction can do to protect your sensitive data, please reach out and we’d be happy to show you a demonstration or have an introductory call.
About the Author: Chris Mack
Chris is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in product development, data analysis, and both traditional and digital marketing. Chris received his bachelor’s degree in English from Bucknell University and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. A passionate marketer, Chris strives to make complex ideas more accessible to those around him in a compelling way.