AI and a Houston Suspect
Ohio Public Records Briefing - Edition #105
It’s a cold week but we will keep you warm with lots of good information in this edition!
Public Records in the News
We know you love Ohio public records, but let’s look elsewhere to gain a better appreciation of just how good (or bad) we have it here!
This issue, we’re going to look west to Illinois. Their public records law (which they call FOIA just like the federal government) underwent some changes in 2026. One of the most interesting changes was an amendment to their definition of public records. Illinois changed their definition to exclude “junk mail” from being a public record. This means that before January 1, 2026, Illinois municipalities apparently had the duty to store, maintain, and provide public access to everything from those “you’ve won a free cruise” junk faxes to good old fashioned junk they received in the mail! In Ohio, our definition is written in a way that automatically excludes junk mail and that kind of stuff from being a public record. Why? Because that junk fax doesn’t document the work of the office!
The other change in Illinois that might make its way to Ohio was a change to the definition of a person. Illinois (and other states) have been seeing more records requests that are generated by online forms, bots, computer programs, or possibly even AI. To address this, Illinois law now allows an agency to ask the person to confirm they are a real person if they have a reasonable belief the request wasn’t submitted by a human. How does the person do that? Either by phone call or an email reply. The government isn’t allowed to ask for personal information though (e.g., names, government ID #s, etc.). It’s probably possible that an AI agent or bot could fake the confirmation, but this will certainly cut down on some automated requests.