My question is what information can be found in public databases and in which ones? Is there any canon references for this?

1. Can I get a scag's driving record from the DMV?
2. Can I look up any court appearances?
3. Can I get property info from the court house?
4. How about education information?

To all 4, yes, you just need to know where to look. DMV for driving stuff. The local court house for criminal records and court dates. Property info? As in is the house his? I don't think so unless he used it as colateral for bail. You would need to know his address which you can get from the DMV, then check the local property office, or assayors office to get that. Education I think you can just go the local Board of Ed., and get that. Also if you know where he graduated from, lots of those things are now on the Net so Classmates can keep in touch. Then that can lead to where he went to college, then on and on. Again it is amazing how much of your life is public record and it only takes a few dollars a stop to get it, if you have to pay at all. Some places in the governemnt let yo just roam the records and photocopy what ever you wan tand not charge at all since yo did all the work.

If you get a tag number, you can get a name, then a billing address, then ou can start to look around for anything else you want. It is amazing the amount of stuff considered public record. It usually costs a few bucks for processing.

Also bear in mind not all locales are like that, Maryland, is. I can find just aobut anything I could ever want on anyone, short of SSN's or credit card stuff. You know things that are considered private. Really if you wan tthe person bad enough, once you find their house it is just a matter of time before you find that info also. Not many people shred important documents before they throw it away. A little dumpster diving never hurt anyone.

Thanks for the info, Frag-o Delux. Now would all of this information be available on the Matrix in Shadowrun or would you have to actually go to the physical building. If available on the Matrix what kind of host would house it? Would any of the info cost nuyen. i.e. driver license info? What other info would be available publicly? Vehicle registration and that kind of thing? What I am thinking of is that I need to find out as much as I can about a mark and I think that the Matrix might be a good place to start. Also if I get the vehicle registration I can use Grid Guide to follow him, instead of having to place a tail. What do others think of this?

Your handle leads me to believe that you're a decker? Or are you just considering getting someone to fish the information out of the Matrix? Regardless, you might want to look at Matrix pg. 129 & 130.

You can get most of the information that you've specified by successfully completing a Standard (TN:5) search test. This is done by using a decker's Computer (Search Operations) skill. There are quite a few modifiers you can get for this type of search operation... most of them increase the target number.

A Detailed search's target number starts at 8 though. Tad harder.