Is all sex offender registry information public domain in the USA? In 1994, Congress mandated that all states develop sex offender registries. Two years later, Megan's Law provided that sex offender information must be made public. National Institute of Justice, &quot;Tracking Sex Offenders&quot; November 13, 2020, nij.ojp.gov Every state in the US has a public registry of sex offenders and limited details as to their identity, home address, work address, etc. Is this information in the public domain? Or does it vary state to state?
&quot;Public domain&quot; refers informally to copyright status, usually works whose protected status has expired. A list of names, addresses and criminal offenses is &quot;factual&quot;, not a creative expression, and is not subject to copyright protection. You may be thinking of &quot;public record&quot;, which is closer to an relevant expression. Typically, as instantiated in Washington state under RCW 9a.44.130 ff, a person convicted of certain offenses is required to register with the county sheriff, and that registration is thus a &quot;public record&quot;. Under a separate law, RCW 4.24.550 disclosure is allowed &quot;when the agency determines that disclosure of the information is relevant and necessary to protect the public and counteract the danger created by the particular offender&quot; – in other jurisdictions disclosure may be mandatory. The specific information to be disclosed is &quot;name, relevant criminal convictions, address by hundred block, physical description, and photograph. The website shall provide mapping capabilities that display the sex offender's address by hundred block on a map&quot;. The Public Records Act does not exclude disclosure and copying of that information, so it is a public record in the sense that it must be disclosed on request. Every state has its own laws implementing this desideratum: all states have such laws, they vary somewhat in details.
In the United States, the U.S. Department of Transportation, by regulation sets uniform design and signage standards for federally funded highways, which most U.S. state and local governments incorporate, either by restating them or incorporating them by reference for non-federally funded roads. I imagine that most other countries have similar regulations. Nonetheless, this is extremely unlikely to prevail as a defense to the traffic violation of speeding which is usually a strict liability offense to which almost no affirmative defenses, excuses, or justifications may be considered.
From my open-source research it seems that law enforcement did not use any coercive powers, such as a subpoena or warrant, in the following case but &quot;covertly&quot; uploaded a suspect's DNA profile in order to identify familial matches for further investigation. So it does show that (in California at least) evidence may be recovered from privately run genealogical databases without the suspect's knowledge or consent depending on which site is used. Joseph James DeAngelo, Jr. Known as The Golden State Killer, Original Night Stalker (amongst others) Thirty-two years after the ending of his killing spree, and 45 years after the beginning of his crimes, DeAngelo was finally arrested on April 25, 2018 ... DeAngelo had been identified four months earlier as the main suspect, when DNA from an ONS [Original Night Stalker] rape case was uploaded to the personal genomics website GEDmatch. With help from a genealogist, Paul Holes (a sheriff investigator who worked on the EAR-ONS cold cases) and an FBI lawyer constructed a family tree based on GEDmatch's results and eventually narrowed the list to DeAngelo. After a DNA sample was surreptitiously collected from the door handle of DeAngelo's car, it was matched with samples related to the Golden State Killer's crimes. Source However, according to the UK's Biometrics and Forensics Ethics Group (BFEG): This process of uploading DNA from a crime scene in the ‘Golden State killer’ case to GEDmatch violated the terms and conditions of use. These terms stated that the person submitting the DNA had to declare that; it was their own DNA; or they were the legal guardian of the DNA donor; or they were otherwise authorised. But I cannot see if this was ever challenged by DeAngelo's defence. The BFEG goes on to say that different sites and different jurisdictions have different requirements: 23andMe, AncestryDNA and MyHeritage do not allow law enforcement use of their databases without a warrant. FamilyTreeDNA offers an ‘opt-out from law enforcement matching’ possibility, and all European users are automatically opted out in line with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Contributors to GEDmatch, which allows law enforcement use of ‘public’ profiles with permission in serious cases, must actively opt in to law enforcement matching.
To be very straightforward, yes, a police department would very likely have records of their past interactions with you in the form of police reports. They cannot just throw them away because it's been scrubbed from your public record. They detail the interactions the police officer had with you. That being said, those records would not show up in a general inquiry into your record, because those records are meant to protect the officer and the department as a reference point they can go back to in case some dispute arose in the future. If a police officer really wanted to find them, they'd have to do a bit of digging for them. The difficulty in finding them would depend on what system the particular police department uses to store those records. Smaller departments may just file them in a cabinet somewhere, whereas larger ones may actually have their own searchable database. But a traffic cop out on the street is only gonna see what you're seeing at the DMV - nothing. There is also a formal NCIC database, but traffic violations would never end up in there. That is a national database that basically stores red flag persons of interest (think stolen vehicles, sex offenders, and gang members). Sometimes multiple departments within a state will share their information with each other, but a department's database is usually kept to that department only. Also keep in mind court records. The court case that had a violation removed under such and such conditions is still gonna be a public record. Those records would generally be available to a judge overseeing your case so if you repeatedly end up in court for the same thing, they're gonna know and they're gonna stop scrubbing it from your record or offerring certain options because you're clearly not learning your lesson. Many laws allow you to have one offense stricken per year and similar stuff like that, but that kind of stuff doesn't just permanently disappear. They have to keep record of it in order to know you've already had your once per year etc. Also a note about parking violations: not all of those are actually issued by police. If it was issued by a private firm then that is not something that would ever show up on your record. It would just be in a database somewhere with whatever private firm issued the fine. Those kind of tickets get sent to collections and hurt your credit score if you don't pay them, rather than affecting your driving record.
No. According to the Section 18 of the U.S. Code, § 2251: (a) Any person who employs, uses, persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any minor to engage in, or who has a minor assist any other person to engage in, or who transports any minor in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, or in any Territory or Possession of the United States, with the intent that such minor engage in, any sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing any visual depiction of such conduct or for the purpose of transmitting a live visual depiction of such conduct,shall be punished as provided under subsection (e) [...] and a minor is defined (Section 18 of the U.S. Code, § 2256) as "any person under the age of eighteen years". As such, you cannot be considered a pedophile. However, if you have sexual intercourses with animals, depending on the State laws on the matter, you might be charged with bestiality or similar offences.
Yes The US constitution is in the public domain. Anyone may publish a version of it, including an altered version. No US law forbidding publication of an altered version would itself be constitutional -- the First Amendment would prevent such a law. However, if an altered version were sold under such conditions that a customer might reasonably believe it to be an unaltered version, that might be false advertising, or perhaps fraud, because the seller would be deceiving the customer as to what the product is.
34 CFR Subpart D covers this topic ("Under what conditions is prior consent not required to disclose information?"). This includes The disclosure is to other school officials, including teachers, within the agency or institution whom the agency or institution has determined to have legitimate educational interests so that raises the question of whether there is a legitimate educational interest. Additionally, the question is raised as to the status of an SRO (they are not teachers). Disclosure is allowed to A contractor, consultant, volunteer, or other party to whom an agency or institution has outsourced institutional services or functions may be considered a school official under this paragraph provided... the conditions being that the person Performs an institutional service or function for which the agency or institution would otherwise use employees; Is under the direct control of the agency or institution with respect to the use and maintenance of education records; and Is subject to the requirements of §99.33(a) governing the use and redisclosure of personally identifiable information from education records I would take this model memorandum as the most likely agreement, though your district may have a totally different memo where SROs are purely security guards. An SRO is to advance the program objective which include "Education of children regarding the role of laws, courts, and Police in society", which is the hook into "legitimate educational interest". This nothwitstanding the part that says that they "are police officers and not school teachers, school administrators, nor school counselors. The officers will assist teachers with classroom presentations on relative topics when requested and able" (there is no principle that only teachers, administrators, or counselors can have a legitimate educational interest). This model memo does not say anything that indicates that the conditions "Is under the direct control" and "Is subject to the requirements of §99.33(a)" are true, but those conditions could be satisfied external to the MOU. There are some additional exceptions of the "if required by law" type, such as a state law "adopted before November 19, 1974, if the allowed reporting or disclosure concerns the juvenile justice system and the system's ability to effectively serve the student whose records are released"; or, after that date, is "subject to the requirements of §99.38" which refers you to §99.31(a)(5)(i)(B). If that is confusing, here are the two self-referring sections: §99.38(a) If reporting or disclosure allowed by State statute concerns the juvenile justice system and the system's ability to effectively serve, prior to adjudication, the student whose records are released, an educational agency or institution may disclose education records under §99.31(a)(5)(i)(B). §99.31(a)(5)(i)(B). The disclosure is to State and local officials or authorities to whom this information is specifically...Allowed to be reported or disclosed pursuant to State statute adopted after November 19, 1974, subject to the requirements of §99.38. So state law is one possibility; "legitimate educational interest" is a remote possiblity. Massachussetts law does include governmental third party disclosures: 603 CMR 23.07(4)(c) A school may release information regarding a student upon receipt of a request from the Department of Social Services, a probation officer, a justice of any court, or the Department of Youth Services under the provisions of M.G.L. c. 119, sections 51B, 57, 69 and 69A respectively. That does not directly apply to local police, but it is possible that a police officer is operating as a probation officer or an agent of the Department of Youth Services. Under paragraph (e), A school may disclose information regarding a student to appropriate parties in connection with a health or safety emergency if knowledge of the information is necessary to protect the health or safety of the student or other individuals. This includes, but is not limited to, disclosures to the local police department Mass. law allows the possibility of treating a police officer as "authorized school personnel" if they are "providing services to the student under an agreement between the school committee and a service provider, and who are working directly with the student in an administrative, teaching counseling, and/or diagnostic capacity" – which is not completely out of the question but is a bit of a stretch (especially in the context of a blanket statement "we share records", not "we may share yours, if you get special counseling"). Tne law also says "Any such personnel who are not employed directly by the school committee shall have access only to the student record information that is required for them to perform their duties", so sharing of all records would not be allowed.
The relevant law is not so specific. It prohibits child abuse and child neglect which are defined only as general standards and not as specific rules. This doesn't appear to be child neglect, indeed, the opposite to the extent that there is such a thing. So, would it be child abuse? This would be up to the finder of fact to determine, and might depend upon the manner in which this is done (for example, what is said to a child about it) and the reason that it is done (e.g. a history of self-harm) and more generally in light of the total context of the situation. But it is not obviously child abuse, unless, for example, recorded video was used for child pornography purposes, which there is nothing in the question to indicate. A comment suggests that the criminal offense of voyeurism (F.S. § 810.140) or video voyeurism (F.S. § 810.145) might be implicated, but both of those statutes apply to &quot;secretly&quot; observing someone or &quot;secretly&quot; setting up cameras, while in this case, the cameras and viewing are anything but secret. So, even if it were child pornography, it would not be voyeurism or video voyeurism under state law in Florida. As a general rule, a child is not entitled to privacy from a parent except in certain specifically defined circumstances (e.g. certain privileged communications).