These days, a debate goes on about your right to be told if a convicted paedophile moves into your area. Tomorrow it's likely to focus your right to access your neighbour's records - whether or not they have committed a serious crime.
Computerisation may make court systems more cost-effective, but it will also make records much easier to access. And this could have far-reaching implications for the legal system.
In the US some states have successfully begun to move courts away from the paper processing procedures over to digital communications with lawyers - the electronic filing of documents.
This allows lawyers to prepare documents on computer and file them with the court. This saves lawyers time and means legal documents can be filed at the last minute.
But this has not been the only approach to court communication. Not only have lawyers been encouraged to communicate with the courts, but the public has too: computer-based kiosks have been set up, where members of the public can pay fines by credit card, purchase forms, and obtain a divorce.
You can even plead guilty in a kiosk and have the relevant fine imposed on you there and then - computerised sentencing at its most accessible.
As far as the courts are concerned, the public use of IT substantially cuts the often considerable cost of processing minor offences.
To the client, it cuts out the need for an expensive lawyer, as you can do it all yourself. Whether this is really in the interests of the client is, of course, another matter. The old adage about a man who represents himself having a fool for a client, might be changed to something about a fool having a computer for a lawyer.
To the lawyer, information technology in the courts would be a double-edged sword, allowing them to offer a cheaper service to clients, but also offering clients an even cheaper way of doing things themselves.
Digital technologies are also likely to make court documents more accessible. Courtrooms and trial records are, theoretically, already open to the public. In practice, though, this is not really the case.
Court buildings were never designed to be theatres and even at major trials only have space for a small number of spectators. And court papers have traditionally always been difficult to access: bundles of printed papers locked away in cupboards which even lawyers have difficulty searching.
Computerisation will mean the courts will soon become enormous holders of what is, in essence, digital public information.
You could, for instance, do a search of the court records to find out whether the neighbours of the house you are about to purchase have a criminal record.
You could discover whether the car salesman you are considering purchasing from has a record for setting the mileage clocks back on cars. And that same car salesman could look at your history of litigation to see whether you were likely to take him to court over a dodgy car.
Of course, having court documents freely available may also mean that jurors trying an individual (and newspapers reporting the case) can circumvent the court's attempts to hide past records from them by going home and connecting into the court's Web site.