Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, had an apparently troubled past that was kept secret in the interest of his privacy. Whether or not disclosure of his troubled past might have prevented some or all of the 32 deaths is an unknowable question. The answer would seem to be that it might have. We at The Open Records Project tend to come down more to the side of the public knowing.
This question between individual right to privacy and public right to know is a classic. The State tends to argue that people can’t be trusted with information. This was one argument we encountered when we were trying to get sex offenders records released a decade ago.
Our position was that we the people created the State not the reverse. If the people can’t be trusted, why should the State be trusted?
Once again this brings to mind whether or not the identities of AIDS infected individuals should be made public. Just as ignorance of a lunatic with a handgun can be dangerous, ignorance of an individual with an infectious fatal disease can be dangerous.
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