“Hey, did anyone see a report from the jail?”

Once, I was a journalist. Well, sort of — I’m a student, and I decided to try my hand at reporting, so I got a job at the student newspaper. I was assigned the cops & courts beat: if the provost got a DUI, it was my job to know about it.

At the University of Florida, the provost only gets arrested once in a while. On other days, I had to find something else to write about. Was a car stolen from campus? Was there a drug bust in a student-heavy part of town?

So, after class, I’d head in to the newsroom, call the county jail, ask them to fax the daily logs… and wait. Sometimes they came right away. Sometimes they were busy, and the fax didn’t come until hours later, after my deadline had passed. Often they weren’t what I’d asked for. Sometimes they never came at all.

Of course, when you’re running a jail, faxing records to the student newspaper probably doesn’t seem like a top priority. But nearly every day, I wondered, “Does the real newspaper have this problem, day after day?”

Other times, the problem was the opposite. Last September, a female student alleged she’d been raped at a fraternity party. She moved to press charges, then changed her mind. A few weeks later, we learned the case had been re-opened. I called the Clerk of Courts to see whether any warrants had been issued. In fact, one had: a search warrant for the frat house. The clerk faxed it to me — along with the original complaint, un-redacted. The police department had declined to tell us much of anything, citing ongoing investigation, but here was the warrant, with every bit of detail. Things I wasn’t supposed to know, and didn’t want to know: the names of the victim and perpetrator, her birthday and address, even her online screenname — there it all was.

This is how well local officials complied with their responsibilities under state and federal sunshine laws — and I was a member of an established newspaper, press pass and all. How in the world would a freelance journalist or blogger fare? What about an average Joe?

Of course, the forces with which I struggled are nothing compared to the secrecy that can exist at a federal level. Perhaps the most mind-boggling example is EFF co-founder John Gilmore’s story, told through articles like this one from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. On the Fourth of July, 2002, Gilmore attempted to board a domestic flight and was asked for photo identification. Gilmore asked to see the law that requires photo ID for domestic flights — and was told the regulation is Sensitive Security Information and “not subject to public disclosure.” He would have to comply with a law he’s not allowed to see.

I gave up reporting, but I remain a citizen. Sometimes I’d like to see a government document, and am disappointed to find it’s not online. For many Americans, especially young people, if something’s not online, it doesn’t exist. And that’s precisely the problem. Sure, I can call and ask someone to fax it to me — I can even go downtown and pick it up myself — but not everyone can.

What good is a fax for a blind person? If that document was online, technologies exist to make it accessible — technologies that don’t exist for a fax. What good is a fax for an individual living overseas — or will the U.S. government pick up the tab to fax documents of any length to Bolivia? More succinctly, what good is a fax for the millions of Americans who have an Internet connection, but no fax machine? Or will Uncle Sam send it via snail mail?

What I’m getting at is this: a better technology exists, with the possibility to save time and money for both individuals and governments. Why aren’t we using it?

To rely on older methods of communication is tantamount to discrimination against citizens who depend on the Internet, for whatever reason they do so. Similarly, to restrict access for journalists from certain news organizations, or journalists from a certain medium, is discrimination. Whether governments do so purposefully or otherwise, the act is equally discriminatory, and unconstitutional government meddling with a free press.

The solutions are not difficult to see: more training for government employees; more, and better, information released by government entities; more information available online, in open file formats, without requiring registration or tracking users’ personal information, in open databases to which no one can be denied access; less secrecy — in short, more respect for the freedom of information, for citizens and journalists of whatever variety.

But the status quo doesn’t change unless citizens push it to. A government with nothing to hide will let citizens see so. A government that pushes back? You may have something to worry about.

Gavin Baker is a freshman majoring in history at the University of Florida and director of Blogshine Sunday for FreeCulture.org. This column, along with the rest of the Blogshine Sunday Web site, is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license, and may be freely reprinted in any medium, with or without alterations, according to the terms of the license.