Making public records really public:
I looked at this last week and didn't want to point to it, but now The Washington Post has done an article on Virginia public records activist B J Ostergren who has been combing local courts and other public records sites looking for personal information. She's found a lot on several prominent people, including Jeb Bush and some other Florida officials, and is posting links to records that contain their Social Security numbers on her Virginia Watchdog Website.
I can't help finding the messenger more offensive than the message (and I don't mean The Post, although there's some negative reaction to their running the story, too: see this, for example) so I'm not linking here, either. (Via Memeorandum.)
I understand the worries about public records but still feel the advantage of having them easily available outweighs the disadvantages for the most part.

On this topic: PrivacyRights.org is keeping a chronology of Public records providers' privacy breaches: it also includes incidents of lost company data.