Observer-Dispatch
Published: January 9, 2007
Section: A-Section - Edition: 1 - Page: 1A

Oneida County records taken offline
Clerk cites need to protect privacy
By RENEE GAMELA

It is unclear when Oneida County land records again will be viewable on the county's Web site after the link to the documents was removed by the county clerk during her first week in office.

Oneida County Clerk Sandra DePerno made good on her campaign promise and removed land records from the Web Friday, citing privacy reasons.

About 3 million public records were made available on the Internet more than a year ago, and nearly 70,000 might have contained information such as Social Security numbers, mother's maiden names, dates of birth and signatures, DePerno said.

"The records are still available, as they always were, here in the clerk's office," DePerno said. "It's always been available; it's just not going to be out on the Internet."

But some question whether the information is more convenient for residents online.

Kim Landon, a journalism professor at Utica College, supported then-Oneida County Clerk Richard Allen's decision to provide public access to county records via the Internet.

"It was put online to adhere to the spirit of the law," Landon said. "(DePerno) has now taken us back in a Stone Age move. We either have to learn to cope with new technology, or we're going to fall behind as a culture."

The process to redact personal information from documents will begin at the end of February, DePerno said. Info Quick Solutions, the Syracuse-based digital records management company that created the system to manage the clerk's records, most likely will handle the process, she said.

It is unknown how much it will cost to redact the information or how long it will take, DePerno said. The clerk is "doing what I was hired to do by the constituents ... and that is to protect them," she said.

The decision to remove the documents from the Web doesn't violate Freedom of Information Law, said Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government.

"For the moment, there's simply nothing in the law that requires any agency place materials on the Internet," Freeman said.

The Oneida County Bar Association last year raised concerns about private information found in the public documents. The association asked Allen to interrupt Internet access temporarily until he met with the bar's board of directors to discuss the steps taken to safeguard personal information. Allen agreed to the meeting, but the public records remained available.

Attorney Julie Grow Denton, the new president of the bar association, said she learned the site was shut down from an Observer-Dispatch reporter late Monday. She declined to comment until she meets at noon today with the bar association's board of directors.