§ 6-1524.Protection of personal and financial information in criminal records.

Criminal case files are public, and Section 6-1524 addresses what should not be visible in them. Any filing containing a Social Security number, a taxpayer identification number, a birth date, the name of a known minor, or a financial account number generally has to be pared down: only a bare reference to the Social Security or taxpayer number (no digits at all), the birth year rather than the full date, a minor’s initials instead of a full name, and the last four digits of an account number.

That redaction requirement does not apply across the board. It does not cover a defendant’s own birth date or name, a financial account or property address at stake in a forfeiture proceeding, records of administrative or agency proceedings, records from another court that were not subject to this rule when originally filed, or filings made under seal covered elsewhere in the rule. So a defendant cannot use this rule to hide their own identity, but the rule still protects third parties whose information happens to appear in the file.

Crime victims get separate treatment. Beyond a victim’s name, other personal identifying information has to stay off publicly available filings, using a Crime Victim Information Form the county attorney completes at the time of initial filing and tenders separately from the rest of the case file, marked confidential and kept apart from the public record by the clerk. Courts also retain flexibility: a filing can go under seal without redaction for good cause, additional information can be ordered redacted, a filer can submit both a redacted public version and an unredacted sealed version, or a party can use a sealed reference list that maps redacted identifiers back to the underlying information. As with the civil-records rule, the duty to redact rests with counsel of record, not the clerk.