Move over, Phillip Marlowe.
It used to be that only a well-connected private eye could dig up the dirt on a suspicious neighbor, a potential employee or that beautiful woman you met at the grocery store and asked to dinner.
But last month a Sacramento-based company started providing that information to the public, The New York Times reports.
Free and supported by ads, CriminalSearches.com claims to include criminal records for all 50 states directly from local courthouses. It has arrests and convictions for all types of crimes and -- in some areas -- even data on traffic violations.
You can even check out your entire neighborhood with a map that displays the addresses and names of those with arrests and convictions. E-mail alerts can notify you when someone in the area gets into trouble or a new person with a checkered past moves in.
The site surely provides what can often be a valuable public service, but it also sets up controversy. People's pasts are no longer their own secrets to spill or keep.
Pay sites like Intelius.com and PeopleScanner.com have offered the same information, but required a credit card number for access, which could have kept many from making inquiries.
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