Slashdot Mirror
Washington Dancers Sue To Prevent Identity Disclosure
An anonymous reader writes with this BBC story about a Washington open-records law that is having some controversial consequences for some unlikely people. "Government open-records requests can be boring. Government open-records requests made by a man who wants to obtain information about 70 licensed strippers in his town so he can 'pray for them', on the other hand... The godly citizen in question is David Allen Van Vleet of Tacoma, Washington. In September he filed court papers to obtain personal information on 70 government-licensed nude dancers at a nightclub in his area — including their full names, addresses, photos and dates of birth. (Yes, Washington requires nude dancers to pay a $75 a year license fee.) The county auditor granted his request under the state's open-records law - although she also notified area dancers and club managers of her action. On 21 October two licensees sued to block the release of the information. Two days later a county judge issued a temporary order blocking the release, with a final decision scheduled for 15 December."
Under the freedom of information act this would be refused likely on the grounds of data protection or No discernible public interest. Does the US law not have an equivalent?
Does the state's database only include actual strippers? In Ohio, police stole a woman's drivers license information and assigned it to an undercover officer, who then got hired on as a stripper as part of a sting operation. It sure would suck if, after being victimized by the police in that manner, a woman was then subjected to who knows what sort of harassment from a random citizen who just wanted to "pray for" her.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
I cannot see how the argument for 'prayer' is legit on logistical or supernatural grounds. There is no clear public benefit here to release this information to this person for the purposes of his own (I guess) spiritual needs. I'd even be hard pressed to make the case if he wanted to do direct health outreach. The licensees can be reached via the places of employ.
Furthermore, one can readily presume that if you are prying for someone to an allegedly omniscient being, he/she/it would be able to work out the details.
If your deity has all the info already?
If your deity doesn't want to divulge the information, you shouldn't be asking the government for it, should you?
You can always pray for Jane Doe 1, Jane Doe 2 etc. Your deity will know for whom the prayers are meant and will change his plan, just for you.
Bert
Same idiocy happened here in the Netherlands when a journalist, someone with extreme leftist connections and a known ETA (terrorist organization) sympathizer, requested the names and addresses of firearms license holders under open government laws. In the end, the guy did not get the requested info i.e. name and address, photo, and serial numbers of the weapons, but he did get a list of date of birth and city of residence of each license holder as well as the manual for Verona, the software that tracks firearm licenses. As a gun owner, the idea of government freely handing this info to people closely tied to ETA terrorists somehow does not give me a warm cozy feeling about sensitive data being in safe governmental hands.
It's very simple: "open government" means that the government should disclose information on the details of their own operation, but never information that can be tied to individuals, except where it concerns information on holders of public office that is relevant to the right of the public to monitor them. Only aggregated data on citizens should be disclosed. And for civil servants or elected officials, relevant data means stuff like expense claims, not stuff like their address, records of previous employment or registered religion.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
IANAL, but I believe you can hire a lawyer to file a suit as an anonymous plaintiff, for a legally justifiable reason of course.
The open records request and fulfillment isn't the issue here. If the government licenses someone, you should be able to request the information of everyone with that license (although I'm not sure home information should be included since it is a professional license). This would be the easiest way to see who is and isn't a licensed professional.
The issue is why in the bloody hell is the government licensing dancers? There is no reason to do that other than they want to collect some extra fees from people. There is no professional service being offered that a license would effect. The purpose of licensing professionals is to ensure that the person meets some basic requirements. Unless they are going to try and require a minimum cup size or dancing ability, there isn't anything to license here.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Umm, Roe v. Wade was brought by an anonymous plaintiff. "Roe" because there was a simultaneous case brought by a "Doe".
There would be no issue here if the state didn't have a BS licensing law.
Seriously: who or what interest does the state imagine it is "protecting" with this license? It isn't there for practical purposes, it's there for the purposes of intimidation and control.
The licensing law is bad because it is the licensing law itself that led to this conflict between public's right to know and an individual's privacy. I do agree that the individual has a right to privacy away from the workplace... but it is the STATE that is violating it with this STUPID law.
The funny thing is that under most circumstances, nudity is not legal in Washington... except, I guess, when you're on stage without a license.
That said, you'd think an all knowing God already knows who the strippers are.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
In the past these repositories of personal information, names addresses and dates of birth,were maintained in the explicit interest of providing an expedited avenue for puritanical groups to harass and intimidate through the power of the state. In the past many owners of gay and lesbian night clubs were targets of assaunt and assassination through public records. Today, many modern puritanical laws infringe upon liberty in the pursuit of extremist religious doctrine as well. for example, abortion records have no HIPAA protection in order to explicitly allow religious groups to target service practitioners, customers, and staff. Lately that targeting has been of a distinctly terrorist nature through the reticle of a high powered rifle, or the blast radius of an improvised explosive. Of course Mister Van Vleet insists he merely wants to 'pray' for the dancers. He insists the prayers will not function through their stage names alone, but only through their real names which is strange as many christians pray for the troops amorphously and not by name. when pressured by a journalist, he insisted he would not harm the dancers but that prayer was merely 1 of many 'protected reasons' he needs the names.
strip clubs, whatever we may think of them, are a beacon of nothing less than american liberty. they dont exist in Pakistan, Iran, or North Korea and to suggest as this religious zealot has that somehow 7 million washingtonians are as fervently interested in the personal information of less than 100 dancers is to succor a distant memory of 1850 when the riverboat was queen and the negro was "scientifically" inferior. The menace of sexual temptation in the 21st century as it applies to 'decency' of any nation ranks rather lowly on this millenials list of concerns, trumped easily by the menace of having to explain to his 7 year old son what to do in a school shooting.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201...
Good people go to bed earlier.
It seems to me that you actually don't need someone's personal details just to pray for them.
How much of David Allen Van Vleet's personal information is now public record because he filed these court papers?
David Allen Van Vleet died in 2006, a good 8 years before he made his FOIA request.
Zombies don't usually worry about retaliation. They keep coming after their target, slowly but surely, filing out FOIA requests after FOIA requests, submitting court documents after court documents. They're relentless. Outside of updating their facebook page, playing the occasional farmville game, and voting in elections, they really have nothing else to do but pursue full-bosomed women.
You clearly don't have a good understanding of prayer. Clearly God knows everything and has a supreme vision of how his eternal plan is to unfold. Prayer is a way to say to God "excuse me, but I would like you to change your plan, I have an idea of how things should progress, and I would like you to at least consider if my idea isn't the right way for things to go". Clearly no one would bother the Almighty just to say "I approve of how you plan to have all things develop, keep up the good work", so when contacting God to ask him to change his plans you better have good facts, like names and addresses and exact birth dates of any strippers that you want him to change his plans for the universe over. Otherwise you're just bothering him needlessly.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
If they were easier to get I'd happily cough up the $75 to become an officially licensed exotic dancer, but the county referenced when I first saw this story a few days ago looked like it'd be a pain unless you were actually an employee of one of the businesses.
Of course, if I did this my wife might actually demand that I dance for her and that could just be ugly all around. I am not a man built for a stripper pole.
fencepost
just a little off
I'm interested in the real identity of Jaquie from the Industrial Strip Gentleman's Club in Hammond, IN. Sweetie, if you see this, call me. Daddy's been bad again.
Don't look at me like that. She's working her way through law school, you know.
You are welcome on my lawn.
First they came for the strippers...
Then they needed about half an hour to recover.
Then they came for the strippers again.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
thanks for that bit of christian morality, brought to you by a comedian
Its called filing under seal.
At the least, can't one dancer file suit, while the rest stay anonymous?
XDInd
Shouldn't he be off helping the poor instead of victimizing women that have enough trouble without a vigalantee with a hard-on turning up outside their front door?