Records: Just Who Is Protecting Whom?

So if I have an arrest record, anyone can get it from a look-up service [“Appeals Judges Back Release of Arrest Records,” June 26]?

But I can be refused a copy of a police report that names me as a suspect or witness, depending on arbitrary criteria? And United Parcel Service maintains a databank of package recipients’ addresses? But I’m denied the Gas Co.’s record of service calls to my home because it’s “confidential”? Nor any record of abuses by a child-care agency, prior to entrusting my child, even under the Freedom of Information Act, because the report names children? Nor a DMV printout on a vehicle before I buy it, to be sure of no outstanding warrant, etc.? Nor my own true birth certificate if I’m adopted? Nor a copy of the consent I signed if I relinquished my own child?

Who’s “protecting” whom?

RON FRIEBORN

Palm Desert