Fascinating little debate happening out in Washington State over just how "public" public data should be. The names of people who sign onto petitions to get various measures on the ballot has long been considered public records in that state -- only, it was trapped in scanned images of the paper petition sheets like you see on the right, which were locked on DVDs available for purchase. But as public data rapidly gets more structured, shareable, and easily parsed, some folks are getting nervous about just how accessible, exactly, public should mean.

In the Washington State case, advocates for gay rights want the names of every Washingtonian who signed a petition to get a Referendum 71, a domestic partnership measure, on the ballot tomorrow. Those names would end up on WhoSigned.org, a site similar to Know Thy Neighbor, which has posted for all the world to see the names of people who signed anti-marriage equality petitions in Florida, Oregon, Arkansas, and Massachusetts. The stated objective is to use the prying eyes of the public to ward off fraud, but there's no small measure of public shaming inherent in the efforts.

The New York Times' William Yardley has the ins and outs of the story. (Photo credit: Washington State's Secretary of State office)