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Washington State Site Revealing Police Data Ruled OK
gnarly writes "NYT reports that the courts have struck down a law which censored posting of personal data of police officers, (home phones, SSN, etc, obtained from public sources) on a single website." (The decision in this case took place in U.S. District Court in May.)
Even though being an officer of the law could mean a higher rate of targeting of abuse, public information like that should be available on everyone or noone.
You just can't have it both ways.
Kids these days. They don't know the difference between classic, and just plain old.
On the one hand, I have to agree with another poster in that being a law enforcement officer shouldn't grant you more privacy than an ordinary citizen. On the other hand, it's too bad that the law in question wasn't more specific, like just banning SSN's. We need some sort of protection from abuse of SSN's- they were never designed to be the universal ID number that they are now, and it's far too easy to commit identity theft with SSN's being relatively easy to acquire...
The dry fish swims alone.
IIRC, there is a anti-abortion group that was putting information on abortion doctors on the web that was forced to remove the site as they were used for murdering the doctors listed. I wish I could remember the name of the site, and searching for anti-abortion or pro-life will get me more hits than I care to wade through. Anyone remember the case I'm talking about here?
And this seems like a public TIA targeted towards police officers. We don't want it applied towards us, I certainly don't want it publically applied to police officers who get people pissed off at them daily trying to protect us. It's not like he's publishing a few involved in a specific complaint.
He's expainding following this ruling to include all the people he can in the criminal justice system. He's not just giving their work addresses, but their personal info. TIA for the criminal justice system for Washington State!
I'm glad I don't have a job there. If he was targeting my state, in my field, my personal info would be immediadately accessable on the web just because I work for someone: Not because I pissed someone off, but just because I have a job!
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
To cite a parallel example in meatspace, obtaining the individual components to make an explosive might be legal -- with some effort. But that doesn't give someone the right to open a Bombs R Us franchise, where the same components are available under one roof with convenient onsite parking and a loading dock. At some point, the same principles will have to be applied to "free" information.
Perhaps one way to deal with this conundrum is to consider not only what the information is, but what you have to know to get to it -- i.e. how it's indexed. If I know the name of a police officer, for example, I can look up his/her phone number in the phone directory. But I can't find that same number by looking under "Police Officers" in the Yellow Pages. A directory that allows me to do that would be qualitatively different from the phone book, even though it yields the exact same content.
We haven't heard the last of this issue by a long shot. The next couple decades will truly be interesting!
"If he wants to drop by the house," Lieutenant Caldwell said, "the police officers would be more than happy to welcome him. We're all armed and trained..."
The website creators reason for the existence of the sight is due to his opinion of rampant corruption of WA police. My understanding is it is an attempt to make all officers think twice of their actions since they are real people and should not be able to hide behind a badge if they act out of the public good.
With the very public statement by Lieutenant Caldwell given to the New York Times, stating many officers desire to have Mr. Sheehan drop by since officers are "trained and armed" implies they would like nothing more than an excuse to injure or kill Mr. Sheehan for his perfectly legal efforts. With statements such as that, I find it very likely Mr. Sheehan's opinion of corruption to hold merit.
Lieutenant Caldwell's anger and frustration is understandable, but flagarent statements such as the one given, to the New York Times of all places, speaks volumes for Mr. Sheehan's claim.
Beware blue cats moving at