In a recent column on O'Reilly's xml.com, Paul Madsen and Carlisle Adams discuss ways to minimize, using XML-based approaches, the privacy impacts using of interconnected data structures to store private information.  [See Privacy and XML, Part I].  The authors echo an emerging issue regarding public records -- how to manage the effects of moving from practical obscurity to electronic availability:

In the past, public records were most likely kept on paper or magnetic tape in physical filing cabinets at offices of various levels of government throughout a country. Thus, even though the information may have been freely available (in a legal sense), the realities of the storage medium prevented this happening on a large scale. Internet technology enables the easy distribution of the information and consequently raises people's sensitivity to this access.

Over at LegalXML, workgroups are formulating a query and response mechanism whereby XML-based queries could first touch a court's data policy, which would shape the resulting transaction.  [NB: As noted previously in this blog, LegalXML has recently joined OASIS.  Document repositories and workgroup archives are still being moved over to the OASIS site.  For a good overview of XML-based electronic filing standards efforts, I recommend this November 14, 2001 O'Reilly XML.com column.]

Although the courtPolicy function is primarily geared toward returning electronic filing "rules" to an internet-based electronic filing manager, this function could be expanded to contain appropriate privacy protections as well.  In this way, as courts adopt model written policies for data access and distribution, these policies can be embedded directly within the machine systems that pass information.