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Comment by duckfang | Hacker News Reader

I think the system in the Netherlands uses a lot more secrecy surrounding the courts systems. In those cases, secrecy is default.. SO having a bureaucratic branch dedicated to determining relevant convictions makes sense.

In the USA, came from the UK which was known (in the 1700's) for having secret trials, secret evidence, secret witnesses, and secret punishments. So the founders built this system to be transparent in many ways. And that meant public recording of crimes. Fast forward a few hundred years, and this computing thing takes off, and records everywhere are put in a system and easily searchable.

Having the secret system in place in the Netherlands and the transparent/easily searchable system in the USA don't really mix all to well.

(Admittedly, much of the courts systems are still opaque as mud, but some important parts are constitutional - like seeing/questioning witnesses, jury of your peers, etc)

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Note that there is no secrecy during court proceedings in the Netherlands: court proceedings are ordinarily open to the public. There are exceptions for family affairs (such as divorces), tax affairs, and criminal cases against minors, but otherwise you are free to watch a court proceeding if you like. Source, in Dutch: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/rechtspraak-en-gesc... The only secrecy is after court proceedings, and even then, only as far as for the identities of the people are involved: court rulings are regularly published online at https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/, easily searchable, with just the names of people and identifying information redacted.

Interesting. Is the design something along the lines of "we want to keep people informed, but not be the sparking catalyst of mobs/witchhunts"?

I imagine if you have a valid reason and petition the court you can have the identity revealed?

Two basic ideas come to mind. We want suspects not have their life destroyed if they are found not guilty. And after you have done your sentence, you should be free to have a normal life again.

For some people and some cases this is not possible. Sometimes there is a publicly known person involved, like the case of Keith Bakker which is in the Dutch news today. He has been a lot on TV in the past. Another case was the killing of Pim Fortuyn, a well-known politician, where everybody knows the name of the killer and he is now somewhat forced to live in another country. Mostly the news talk about Jos B. or similar semi-private namings. People closely involved know who it is about, but it doesn't need to be on TV or in the newspaper.

mpol already answered part of the design here about the need for privacy for the people involved; it is a balancing of priorities, both transparency in the judicial system and that privacy are important and this is a way of getting both.

About your other question though: one of the courts states in an answer to one of their frequently asked questions, https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Organisatie-en-contact/Organisati..., that a copy of a verdict will always be anonymised. No suggestions are made for when you want to apply for an exception to that rule and I suspect it is not possible at all. I am also struggling to come up with a valid reason for such a request; if it is indeed impossible, that might not be a problem.

How do they handle requests to view information about court cases currently in progress?

Example: I own and live in a condo apartment in a housing complex where the legal entities for my building and four other buildings are all members of one overall legal entity for the complex. Some of the other legal entities, and some of their administrators, are currently suing the overall legal entity with various claims. The management notified all owners that this was happening, as they're required by law to do, but didn't give the full complaint. (They did name the individuals and legal entities who filed suit, including the administrator roles of the individuals.) I'd like to read the full details.

Where I live, I can go to the public library or the courthouse, search for the involved parties in a database, and read the specifics. I don't have to prove that I am indirectly a partial owner of the entity being sued (though I am); this is available to the general public.

How would this work in the Netherlands if public access is anonymized?

I imagine the reason your laws only requires a notification that a court case is happening, without details, is because all the information is already public anyway and you can look up anything you need, so I expect that if Dutch law has similar provisions, it would require more details to be shared with you. However, this is just guessing, I have no experience with this, sorry.

Though in this case the transparency is one-sided: ICANN can gather all manner of information on Sunde, but Sunde is denied any detailed explanation from ICANN on exactly why his application was denied. Just this rather opaque reason of them being "not comfortable" with him operating a domain registrar.

It's worth noting that in the UK, an applicants car minal background could easily be checked but the application process is only allowed to ask if you have any "outstanding" issues. The idea being that crimes you have served your time for, and those that happened in the past are usually not relevant and can keep ex convicts in low paying / criminal work if used to stop them gaining legitimate work.

Criminal status is protected.

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