Slashdot Mirror
Woman With Police-Monitoring Blog Arrested
Kris Thalamus writes "The Washington Post reports that a Virginia woman is being held in custody by police who allege that information she posted on her blog puts members of the Jefferson area drug enforcement task force at risk. 'In a nearly year-long barrage of blog posts, she published snapshots she took in public of many or most of the task force's officers; detailed their comings and goings by following them in her car; mused about their habits and looks; hinted that she may have had a personal relationship with one of them; and, in one instance, reported that she had tipped off a local newspaper about their movements. Predictably, this annoyed law enforcement officials, who, it's fair to guess, comprised much of her readership before her arrest. But what seems to have sent them over the edge — and skewed their judgment — is Ms. Strom's decision to post the name and address of one of the officers with a street-view photo of his house. All this information was publicly available, including the photograph, which Ms. Strom gleaned from municipal records.'"
Is it in the public's interest for individual officers to have their names, pictures, addresses and photographs of their houses published to the world?
Would you appreciate it if that were done to yourself?
Now imagine that you work out in public, and there are people with whom you come into contact (and reprimand) who may have violent tendencies. Can you imagine that? Good! Now ask yourself those first two questions again. Do you still think that that information is in the public interest?
Oh wait, you posted on Slashdot as an Anonymous Coward, so obviously you fear anyone finding out anything about yourself, yet you most likely don't do anything more dangerous than working at McDonalds.
Just for the icing on the cake, her blog is called "I HeArTE JADE" which to me (I may be reading into this the wrong way) comes across as "I HATE JADE" and even a quick perusal of the site leads me to believe that she is acting out of pure vindictiveness, while trying to pretend that it is out of awe and respect.
I am not stubborn. I am right!
I've been following this story for a few years, or rather following it as it developed.
Her ex-husband is Kevin Strom, a prominent white nationalist and white supremacist* who was arrested for possession of child pornography and beating his wife (while threatening worse if she testified against him) a couple of years ago. He'd been stalking a ten-year-old girl, regularly cruising by her house, giving her gifts, sending her love letters, and proposing to her. (The kid's parents were none too thrilled.) It turned out, bizarrely, that none of that is illegal -- but possession of child pornography landed him in prison for a couple of years. He was released earlier this year. He was also, incidentally, an inveterate troll of one of my blogs, so I've got a special dislike for the guy.
Anyhow, Elisha is every bit as much of a racist as Strom, only she's also a feminist, which means that racists think she's scum, meaning that basically everybody hates her. Based on her blog entries, commenters on my blog have come to the conclusion that she was having an affair with one or more of these police officers. To my knowledge, she's never had any interaction with JADEâ"that is, neither she nor her husband have been busted for drug possession by them. So her interest in them appears to be romantic. Spurned, she's started stalking them, and expanded her interest to include all members of JADE.
What I can't shed any light on is whether or not this arrest is appropriate. I've been involved in a couple of high-profile bloggers' free expression cases (as a defendant in both cases), and though you'd think I'd rush to defend somebody in her positionâ"cretin though she may beâ"I just don't think it's cut-and-dry enough. The fact that she's putting this stuff on a blog seems to be irrelevant, by which I mean it's not a special form of expression here. She's not acting in the manner of a journalist, by which I mean that there is no goal to her coverage, no public interest being served, no story being pieced together. She's simply taking private information about private individuals who happen to work for the local government (albeit in a very private capacity) and making it public.
The question here is simply, I think, whether stalking laws are meant to cover people who are public employees. If a racist who advocates violent rebellion against black Americans starts following the a black secretary who works in the county office building, documenting her every move publicly, can the police intervene? Or is that his right, because she's opted out of a right to privacy by working for a government agency? There is a legitimate argument to be made that it is his right, in order to be consistent with what is to be expected for more prominent public employees. But a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, after all, so maybe we should put less thought into being consistent and more into protecting our citizens. I'm not being vague to be cute -- I really don't know what's right here.
* I regret that covering these nutcases involves learning things like that there's a difference between being a white nationalist and a white supremacist.
This post isn't trolling. Obama admitted in his book "Dreams From My Father" that he had used both cocaine and pot. That would disqualify him from any security clearance.
Actually, it doesn't. Failing to disclose it could.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I can confirm that you can get a security clearance with both pot and cocaine drug use in your history. I stopped using 3 years prior to applying for "clearance required" job.
In my clearance application, I explained the use of each substance. After 8 months of background checking, my clearance came thru. I worked in that environment for the next 8 years before moving into the private sector.
Revealing classified information is against the law.
No it is not. If you come across classified information in public then you can do whatever you want with it. There are recent anti-news-reporter laws that prevent one from convincing someone with clearance into revealing classified information to you, but otherwise if you find it in an open source (term of art, not to be confused with software) then you can do with it what you will. Sometimes two pieces of information will not be classified unless combined together but if you aren't cleared in the first place you can combine that information yourself and it still isn't classified.
So for an uncleared person to reveal undercover cops' identities by observing the police station and using public records can in no way be considered a security violation (another term of art) by that person. It might be a violation on one of the cops' part for exposing himself when he should not have.
The Plame affair was a whole different story, Armitage was cleared for access to know that she was an agent. He violated his clearance by telling that information to an uncleared person.
So, in summary, it is even more lopsided than you made it out to be. In no way can this blogger have revealed classified information since she never had access to any in the first place. But Armitage clearly did so in direct violation of his clearance.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.