Getting Free Public Information
Posted by Sarah on Mar 27, 2009
If you want to find out information about a person, there are many places to get this info. Many courthouses are open to the public during regular business hours and anyone can go and peruse the records there. You will find tax information about people and the property they own, deeds, birth, death, and marriage certificates, and in some cases, military records as well. Most of this information is in the public domain and can be looked at by anyone. It is public knowledge and can be requested in person or through the Freedom of Information Act.
While the County Courthouse is a great place to find free government records, it is often best to conduct an internet search instead. This is because the courthouse is limited to county specific files only. For instance, if you were to conduct a background search on a babysitter and didn’t know they once lived in Atlanta, Georgia, you wouldn’t be able to retrieve all the appropriate documents to reach an informed decision. So if you are looking for government records about someone who might live in Hamilton County and search Google for hamiltoncountypublicrecords, you would more than likely find more results that way then if you were to go to the courthouse.
The same is true in Jefferson County. The courthouse there only has records for the county. It doesn’t have any federal or state records there. So if you wanted to find out all the information you could on a person in Jefferson County and searched for jeffersoncountypublicrecords online, you would also be able to find state and national records on them as well as possible FBI information, too.