Focusing on mug shot websites.

• Author: Greenberg, Pam
• Position: TRENDS & TRANSITIONS - Brief article

Arrest records and police mug shots have long been available to the public, open to inspection in file cabinets at police departments or law enforcement agencies across the country. The Internet, however, has ended the practical obscurity that paper records used to ensure. Now, many types of public records, including mug shots, are posted on the Web in digital formats, where anyone can copy them.

And copy they have. Several websites post the copied mug shots and then charge fees as high as $ 1,000 to take down the photographs of those who are innocent or can show that charges were dropped.

Lawmakers in several states see the practice as extortion and are taking aim at these sites. Georgia, Illinois, Oregon, Texas and Utah in 2013 enacted legislation that, among other provisions, bans commercial sites from charging innocent people fees to take down their photos or prohibits sheriffs from releasing mug shots to sites that charge such fees. Wyoming passed a...