Obtain Government Public Records For Anyone

Public records are information. That information is obtained from various government agencies. All public records are 'government records' (in a way) because they have been recorded by local, state, federal and other government agencies.

How do you obtain government public records?

Government agencies - direct access

Most government agencies offer free online access to public records. Now, I have been wondering whether to provide you with some link to a database that keeps all these sites in one place or simply tell you to use a search engine like Google or Yahoo.

After some research, I have realized they both have advantages and disadvantages.

So, use a directory (a good one is located on brbpub.com/freeresources/pubrecsitesStates.aspx) to see what type of public information is possible to obtain in a particular state.

Use Google/Yahoo to search for additional sites once you know the specific type of records you want to obtain. The above link I mentioned links to many sites which might be outdated. This is where search engines come for the rescue.

The problem with using government sites

Public records are, indeed, public. Are they free to access? Not really. Although the government claims they are free, you still need to pay a small fee to the government. That is the one disadvantage of using those government sites. The second disadvantage is they are not easily accessible. Let's say you want to do a statewide criminal search, which means, you need to obtain public records from all the courts in the state.

That is a lot of time and money. Instead of doing this, you can invest in a background check service that will do this for you.

Background Check Services - indirect access

These services collect big amount of data every day from various government agencies. Why they do this? It is because of the example above. They save you time and money. That is why many lawyers and private investigators will recommend you to use a 'private sources' like these services instead of going directly to the government.