Wisconsin Circuit Court Access is a website that provides access to some circuit courts records of Wisconsin. The website displays the case information entered into the Consolidated Court Automation Programs case management system by court staff in the counties where the case files are located; the court record summaries provided by the system are all public records under Wisconsin open records law sections 19.31-19.39 of the Wisconsin Statutes. WCCA was created in response to an increasing number of requests for court records from district attorneys, sheriffs’ departments, other court business partners. Title companies, members of the media and the general public have benefited from WCCA. Since WCCA was implemented on January 1, 1992 in Vilas County, Wisconsin it has expanded to all Wisconsin counties; the last county that joined the online system was Portage County in 2008. The website averages about a million data requests a day, it has generated privacy concerns. Appointed by the director of state courts, the WCCA Oversight Committee serves as an advisory board on policy issues related to the WCCA Web site.

The original WCCA Oversight Committee was convened in 2000. This committee was instrumental in the development of a comprehensive policy that addresses electronic access to circuit court records; the committee is being reconvened to review and modify this policy based on feedback received in the intervening years about the information available on the WCCA Web site. In 2006, changes were made to the system that included a glossary of legal terms, a caution to employers regarding job discrimination, a decrease in the amount of time certain records remain public and an executive summary page. Personal information appearing in court records is protected by Wisconsin statutes only in limited circumstances. Wisconsin case law has said that if the information may be harmful to an individual's reputation or privacy, not sufficient to allow a judge to seal a court record; those who feel their safety is at risk may petition the court to remove their addresses from the online record of a non-criminal case.

Wisconsin law allows a judge to "expunge" a case in only two situations, both involving youthful offenders: Misdemeanors committed by person under age 25. If the judge ordered expunction upon successful completion of the sentence, the record can be expunged. See §973.015, Wis. Stats. Adjudication of a juvenile delinquent. A juvenile, adjudged delinquent can, upon reaching age 17, petition the judge for expunction of the juvenile adjudication. See §938.355, Wis. Stats. An expunged case is sealed by the clerk of court and is available to be viewed only with a court order. If the judge properly orders a case expunged, any reference to it will be removed from WCCA. A judge has no other authority or power to expunge cases, there are no similar provisions for other types of cases. Privacy advocate and Wisconsin State Assembly Representative Marlin Schneider, on the CCAP Oversight Committee, has said: This easy access to information via computer constitutes a serious threat to individuals' reputations, job applications and getting a date.

It has been used for identify theft, election mischief, needs to be controlled. In a state which prides itself on access to information it is unlikely that anything will be done about this until a Supreme Court Justice or Governor is the victim of this insidious system. Judge Gary Carlson of the Wisconsin Circuit Court, who served on the CCAP Creation Committee and continues to serve on the Oversight Committee, has said that people should be able to find out if someone served time, he said public records are public whether it's on a hard-copy file. Judge Carlson said, These are public records; these are the people's records. They're not mine. They're not yours; the people have paid for these records. They own them. They're their records, and they're entitled to see. Free information advocates argue that WCCA does not contain any more personal information than the phone book - it does not include Social Security numbers - so it does not make identity theft any easier. Others argue that it does make identity theft easier because it contains information on gender and birth date, which are not included in a phonebook.

Wisconsin Circuit Court Access website EEOC "What You Should Know About the EEOC and Arrest and Conviction Records" EEOC "Background Checks: What Employers Need to Know" Wisconsin Department of Justice "Notice to Employers" Wisconsin Court System Badger Herald Onalaska Community Life "Keep state court records open and online" Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online "Kessler: Access to online court records should be limited" Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online "Proposal would let some online court records vanish" Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online "Panel reviewing court record access"

A cable tester is an electronic device used to verify the electrical connections in a signal cable or other wired assembly. Basic cable testers are continuity testers that verify the existence of a conductive path between ends of the cable, verify the correct wiring of connectors on the cable. More advanced cable testers can measure the signal transmission properties of the cable such as its resistance, signal attenuation and interference. A basic cable tester is a battery operated portable instrument with a source of electric current, one or more voltage indicators, a switching or scanning arrangement to check each of several conductors sequentially. A cable tester may have a microcontroller and a display to automate the testing process and show the testing results for multiple-conductor cables. A cable tester may be connected to both ends of the cable at once, or the indication and current source portions may be separated to allow injection of a test current at one end of a cable and detection of the results at the distant end.

Both portions of such a tester will have connectors compatible with the application, for example, modular connectors for Ethernet local area network cables. A cable tester is used to verify that all of the intended connections exist and that there are no unintended connections in the cable being tested; when an intended connection is missing it is said to be "open". When an unintended connection exists it is said to be a "short". If a connection "goes to the wrong place" it is said to be "miswired"; the testing is done in two phases. The first phase, called the "opens test" makes sure; the second phase, called the "shorts test" makes sure. There are two common ways. Current is passed down the connection. If there is current the connection is assumed to be good; this type of test can be done with a series combination of a light bulb. A resistance test. A known current is passed down the voltage that develops is measured. From the voltage and current the resistance of the connection can be calculated and compared to the expected value.

There are two common ways. A low power, low voltage source is connected between two conductors that should not be connected and the amount of current is measured. If there is no current the conductors are assumed to be well isolated. A high voltage test. Again a voltage source is connected but this time the voltage is of several hundred volts; the increased voltage will make the test more to find connections that are nearly shorted since the higher voltage will cause the insulation of nearly shorted wires to break down. More powerful cable testers can measure the properties of the cable relevant to signal transmission; these include the DC resistance of the cable, the loss of signal strength of a signal at one or more frequencies, a measure of the isolation between multiple pairs of a multi-pair cable or crosstalk. While these instruments are several times the cost and complexity of basic continuity testers, these measurements may be required to certify that a cable installation meets the technical standards required for its use, for example, in local area network cabling.

An optical cable tester contains a visible light source and a connector compatible with the optical cable installation. A visible light source is used, so that detection can be done by eye. More advanced optical cable testers can verify the signal loss properties of an optical cable and connectors. Time-domain reflectometer Specialized Test and Measurement Devices at Curlie Data Communications Testing and Tools at Curlie