Background. In March 1997, the defendant and his then-roommate apparently got into an altercation, and in April of that year they each pursued criminal charges against the other in the Boston Municipal Court. The charges against the defendant were dismissed. Almost two decades later, the defendant applied to the Board of Registration in Medicine (board) for a medical license. On his application, the defendant disclosed four sets of *501criminal charges he previously had faced, but he did not mention the charges stemming from the roommate incident (April 1997 charges). The board issued the defendant a medical license notwithstanding the prior charges he had disclosed. However, when the board subsequently learned of the April 1997 charges -- which had not yet been sealed -- it commenced an investigation into whether the defendant's failure to disclose them on his application warranted enforcement.3 *95Representing himself, in November 2015, the defendant filed a motion on the closed criminal docket requesting that the April 1997 charges be sealed for "good cause" pursuant to G. L. c. 276, § 100C. After a pro forma hearing in which an unidentified representative of the Commonwealth stated that he or she had no objection to the sealing,4 a Boston Municipal Court judge allowed the defendant's request and ordered the records of the April 1997 charges sealed. The defendant subsequently separately requested that the records be sealed by the Commissioner of Probation (Commissioner) pursuant to the automatic sealing procedures of G. L. c. 276, § 100A.5 Because the April 1997 charges met the qualifying criteria set forth in § 100A, the Commissioner allowed the sealing of the records pursuant to that section. As the board acknowledges in its brief, "[t]he Commissioner is required to seal the criminal records automatically under G. L. c. 276, § 100A [,] if the individual meets the objective statutory requirements."