[4ntonius8lock]

It has to do with the concept of government transparency. In the US, from what I understand, the founders of the country feared secret courts issuing secret sentences for secret reasons.

So the idea is that almost all government stuff is public information. It's why FOIAs are so powerful. Literally anyone can ask the government to open up it's docs on virtually anything as long as national security isn't involved (and this is abused, but to a degree only) it has to comply.

Now, such a tool will inevitably have good and bad. Just as having private court cases will also.

Personally I think we need to create a privacy reform similar to the Civil Rights act of 1964 to address this and many other concerns. I'm simply explaining the thought process where our current tradition came from.

Florida actually has much broader public information laws than the rest of the country. That's why you see so many 'Florida man' stories. My understanding is FL takes it a step further than just being public, they publish much of it by default, making it easy for reporters to sift through and find headlines.

[jdmichal]

The Florida laws are colloquially known as the sunshine laws. And it's not just public records. It also includes pretty much all meetings between officials, even informal ones. And it also includes judicial records, which is why Robert Kraft's defense cares so much about suppressing the video from his case.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_information_legis...