Just when you think you have heard all there is to hear, along comes a story like this one! How a parking violation could be related to adoption is a weak possibility. However, if I can walk down the street, see a hole in a fence and relate that to adoption, I suppose anything is possible. (Yes, I can relate a hole to adoption, but I will blog about that on my firstparent blog later in the week.)

David Munro was searching a state-run court records database late last year looking for his parking citation when he stumbled across a piece of his son's confidential adoption record.

The story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is as described above. An adoptive dad was looking for some information about a parking ticket, and stumbled upon some confidential information about his son's adoption.

Mr. Munro said what he discovered was enough information for someone to find out that they were adopted, or possibly even locate their birth parents. What a shock that must have been for him! I wonder if this revelation had searchers in Wisconsin heading for the site?

Upon further reading, the information probably did not help any searchers in Wisconsin as the information was only on the Internet for about four months. However, it would have made a great story for someone about how they found a birth parent, right? Can you imagine searching for a parking ticket and stumbling across confidential adoption information instead?

Of course, this story does present an interesting and often unknown point about the secrecy of adoption records. One of the chief reasons cited for keeping adoption records closed is for the sake of birth mothers' privacy. However, even in closed adoptions, particularly private ones, adoptive parents often know the birth mother's name.

Maybe that means that you can trust adoptive parents with the confidential information, but no one else? I really have no answer for that question. If keeping the records private for the sake of a birth parent was really a reason for closed records, how can one explain that often adoptive parents have that confidential information?