State Cannot Force Removal of SSNs From Privacy Advocate's Site

jvatcw brings us a story about Betty Ostergren, who operates a website dedicated to pointing out the social security numbers visible in public records. The purpose of the site is to raise awareness of privacy concerns regarding the personal information shared in Virginia's governmental websites. Legislation was introduced in Virginia to combat Ostergren's website, but last Friday a judge shot down the attempt to censor her, writing, "It is difficult to imagine a more archetypal instance of the press informing the public of government operations through government records than Ostergren's posting of public records to demonstrate the lack of care being taken by government to protect the private information of individuals."

Comments

Wtf...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fantastic...now I need to make sure MINE is not on there... This is real f'd up man.

Damn state using MY taxes to help fund putting this stuff up there *then* charging ME to get it? WTF!

Not that I want to pay to get it in the first place because it shouldn't be public knowledge anyways. While the documents are official documents any and ALL personal information that can be used to identify ANYONE should be omitted. If the FBI, CIA, etc can release unclassified documents with shitloads of stuff blacked out then the state can do this.

Re:It's sad this had to go to court.

[aardwolf64]

You know what else is online? Kiddie porn. Does that make it acceptable for me to copy and host it on my site, just because it's already there?

Re:Assume

[Archangel Michael]

why?

Why is it irrelevant?

You've bought the lie that you need credit to buy things. You can have WAY more things without CREDIT than with it.

Credit = interest. Interest = drain on resources.

If you bought a house, a crummy run down dump, but something you could save up for, and referbished it, and built it up, and lived in it 4 - 5 years, you could resell it for more, and buy a better home that needs work and do the same thing.

There is something about sweat equity that most americans are unwilling to consider. They want the nice house now, don't care about payments and will find a lender that will sell them the bill of goods that they want to buy.

Then they get caught up in the whole "housing boom" and now they are upside down in houses they can't afford to keep.

If that is NORMAL, I don't want it, thank you very much for the offer though.

People buying things that they otherwise can't afford = disaster ... every time!