Paranoid? What do I have to be paranoid about, I have a gun??? Just because some choose to protect themselves does not make them paranoid. Does having a security system make one paranoid? How about a cell phone to call the police?

Also, it really did not come down until Christian's home address and the editors home address hit every forum in the country. Thanks to the Public GIS system. I always thought that had more to do with it then all the out rage.

Matt's point is valid - we have no idea what these people are charged with. And for that matter, even if they are charged with a crime, they might not be guilty. So until they have a trial and are found guilty, they're still law abiding in society's eyes as well.

I hate how many Conservatives can't argue a point while conceding another. Yeah, The Roanoke Times' Editorial Board screwed up by posting the list, even if it was public. But to say they "didn't have much of a problem" simply isn't true, because they took the list down and apologized for not considering the ramifications.

Also, Jeff suggests that somehow The Roanoke Times would be responsible if someone burglarized the gun owners house. Um, how about holding the potential burglar responsible?

Life WIN.

But people who do very common things like buy and sell property, obtain concealed carry permits, and other things that create a paper trail of records that are unquestionably public should remain mindful of that fact. You can go in the DataSphere right now and get a great level of detail on every property parcel in Roanoke, including the owner's name, the price the paid for it, who sold it to them, it's square footage, and more. Go to the Roanoke GIS, and you can get even greater detail, plus a photo.

True, there's a difference between a record being public and it being public AND easily accessible from any computer on the planet.

But given the march of technology in both the mass media and in the governments which maintain public records, it seems to me that public information is likely to become more easily accessible, not less, regardless of the level of outrage. That's certainly been the trend so far. If that wasn't the case, a job like mine that depends upon it wouldn't exist.

So as a citizen, what do you do? Get used to it? Raise hell and try to change it? Or in some instances, like concealed weapons, does that activity just go underground? That's certainly a possibility, that people will begin to keep things off the books to keep them secret. That's a risk of public information and the kind of transparency we value in this country. We like our government to be open so we can see what our government is up to, but open records don't just cut one way.

Fred, in defense of the St. Pete Times, the developer of the mugshots site didn't defend it as journalism. Rather, he said newspapers are in desperate times, and doing thing like the mugshots site just to drive traffic and help make money ought to be part of the equation.

Now mugshots are a different story. The Tampa paper's defense of their product as "journalism" is laughable. It's a very slick implementation of the kind of things sites like Muggn.com and The Smoking Gun are doing, but it's still train-wreck voyeurism. Present the data on arrest demographics and it's journalism. Draw eyeballs to funny mugshots and it's just guilty fun.

But the names of people wanted for committing actual crimes, that's too far?

Gimme a break.