Readers of this space may remember a brouhaha in March when the Roanoke Times used Sunshine Week to justify publishing the names and addresses on their website of over 135,000 people in Virginia's New River Valley who possessed a concealed handgun permit.

The database was quickly pulled after outraged readers blasted the paper for releasing the information. Some of the folks with the permits were law enforcement officers who were not too happy to have their home addresses published. Others were women in hiding from abusive ex-spouses.

Afterwards, the Virginia legislature proposed a bill making the information private and that state's Attorney General went ahead and did so anyway.

So guess what the Tennessean did on Tuesday? As a side bar to a front page story on guns, the paper placed Tennessee's database, listing everyone in the state with a carry permit, on their website.

The reaction was similar, if not greater, than the Virginia incident. Within just a couple of hours, the Tennessean removed the information, but as in the case two months ago, the damage was already done. Now if a thief wants to know where to steal a firearm from, they only have to consult the database.

While the Tennessean is correct in stating that the information is public record and they have the right to publish it, the question is: Was it right to publish it? Perhaps the question should be this: Should our state government make this sort of thing available where anyone can access it?

Indeed, Tuesday's incident may cause our legislators to propose a similar bill like Virginia did to restrict the release of such information. The Tennessean may not have realized it, but they could have unwittingly cut themselves off from once public records.

Also, some people may be wary of applying for a permit to protect themselves now that they know their addresses could be published.

The danger of just anyone having access to some types of information was driven home in 1989 when up and coming actress Rebecca Shaeffer of the CBS series "My Sister Sam" was shot dead at her front door by a crazed fan who simply walked into the California's DMV offices, paid $1, filled out a Form 70, and was given the star's home address.

Afterwards, California passed a law in 1990 that prohibited the DMV from releasing addresses. The law was the first of its kind and later helped to convict another man who was attempting to carry out threats against director Steven Spielberg.

More recently, critics of Al Gore used public information, specifically utility bills, to point out the hypocrisy of spending 20 times more than the typical Nashville household, and then asking everyone to cut back on energy usage.

In today's age of the Internet, finding stuff on anyone is frighteningly easy. Addresses, phone numbers and the current value of your home, among other information, can all be accessed with a few keystrokes. The practice of "Googling" yourself to see what is out there on the web about you can be like a kick in the gut.

Even more disturbing is a report that the New York Times plans to do "data mining" of ordinary citizens in an effort to increase on-line profits and readership. The ironic thing is this is from the same paper that won a Pulitzer Prize last year for exposing the government's data mining efforts in the fight against terrorists.

Journalist Don Surber said it best on his blog when he stated: "The press is supposed to be the watchdog of the government, not a watchdog of the people."