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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.'"
If she hadn't done anything wrong.
We have seen this many times in the past, and no doubt we will see it into the future.
The system is flawed, but the flaw is supposed to be secret because it is readily used by law enforcement and the like to violate the privacy of individuals. If it were public knowledge that we could access public records for such things, the laws might need to be changed and inadvertently protect the people from abuse by government and we just can't have that.
I'd say: "If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear".
Funny how law enforcement always trots out that line, but goes ballistic when the people apply it to them instead.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
This just another case of rights vs responsibilites. I don't think she has done anything wrong per se but she has acted in an irresponsible manner. These police officers deal, on a day to day basis, with people that range from mostly harmless to exceedingly dangerous. Posting their movements, home addresses and other information all on one place, I would argue, diminishes their safety. The information might have been publicly available but there was a certain amount of affort required to collect it. I would imagine a large number of the people these police officers interact with couldn't be bothered to put in that effort themselves but if it's as easy as just going to a blog maybe they would do something.
In an ideal world the police would have been allowed to just go round to her and ask her to act more responsibly. Let her have her blog just make the infromation a little less specific and perhaps throw in some dummy data for good measure.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
One of the peculiar things about gathering intelligence on someone or a group is that most of the information you need is not secret. It's right there out in the open.
This is a classic example of what happens when someone gathers public data and then uses it. The Police are upset because they didn't take precautions and they never thought anyone would be so obsessive about their identities and behaviors. This is exactly the same reason that so many police are scared of trunk-tracking scanners. They would like to think their communications amongst their group is private.
If the police are truly interested in maintaining a deep cover, they should do it with full legal backing and not make any half assed efforts, hoping that nobody will bother to track them down.
My guess is that this woman will beat the charge and teach cops across the nation an important lesson: The public is watching.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Nope.
Police are the government. They retain their arrest powers even when off duty -- in truth, they are never off the job.
We have the absolute right to monitor and comment on how the government does its job. If such scrutiny makes it harder for the government to do some things, maybe that's because those are things it shouldn't be doing.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Why is it OK when its a police officer?
The point is that it's NOT OK (which is what the GP was saying).
The police already have near-ubiquitous tracking of the plebs (license plates, cell phones, 'net access, crime/speed/toll/stoplight cameras, bank statements). All that information is being tracked all the time automatically (it's just a matter of filtering and storage which moore's law will fix)
It's just interesting to see the law enforcement reaction when the tables are turned.
So many of the police-state arguments that the purveyors of the same tactics don't like being at the receiving end of:
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear..."
"You don't have an inherent right to privacy..."
"There's no such thing as privacy in public areas..."
It seems when a private citizen tracks a small group of people it's "stalking", when large groups of government officials track the entire population it's just fine.
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.