SEATTLE, April 14 - Police officers, with their extensive databases,
keen
investigative skills and knack for locating people, have
not been the types to
step forward in defense of personal privacy.
That is until now.
A battle between Western Washington law
enforcement
agencies and a private network administrator
from Mill Creek is
fueling the debate over personal privacy in the
information age.
At the center of the debate is a Web site,
the Justice Files,
which lists the names, Social Security numbers
and salary ranges
of local officers.
It has many in law enforcement worried
over the accessibility
of what they consider private information about
themselves.
The issue is headed to Superior Court,
where the city of
Kirkland and several individual police officers
are suing the site
and its administrator, William Sheehan, for
invasion of privacy.
"I think it's a get-even thing to police,
and obviously it's
wrong," said Bill Hanson, executive director of
the Washington
Council of Police and Sheriffs.
One year ago, a Kirkland municipal judge
sentenced Sheehan
to six months in jail and two years probation
for using his personal
Web site to harass an officer. The case is on
appeal.
The story behind the Web site began about
a year ago, when
Sheehan began harvesting information through
public disclosure
requests and from various commercial sources,
such as Internet
databases.
Although much of the data listed in
spreadsheet format at
Justice Files was obtained through public
records kept by various
government sources, the police are questioning
the rights of
Sheehan and the Web site's unnamed owners to
compile the
information and present it in such a public
fashion.
The Web site, they say, jeopardizes their
safety.
But many who have joined the debate are
not questioning
whether Sheehan should be allowed to post the
data.
Instead, they wonder whether he should
have had access to
the information in the first place.
"The Internet does pose an interesting
dilemma, but it's just a
medium," said Tim Greef, a policy associate for
the Washington
Public Research Interest Group. "The problem is
that the
information is out there."
Last year, when Sheehan made requests for
the officers' names
and salaries, he was sued by the King County
Sheriff's Office to
stop the public disclosure.
In November a Superior Court judge ordered
the names of
county officers to be released, but the
Sheriff's Office continues to
fight it.
The site's owner, who calls himself "Mike
Johnson" to protect
himself from the harassment Sheehan said he has
received over
Justice Files, agrees that sensitive
information should not be made
available because it permits fraud.
"Police officers have access to the most
intimate details and
they use that access on a regular basis for
issues not related to
proper law enforcement," Johnson said in a
recent telephone
interview.
He added that city officials asking the
court to stop the Web
site are "perpetuating a special class of
people who are more
protected than the rest of us."
"I don't think police officers should be
different from
everybody else," Hanson said. "But
investigations for the most part
in most agencies are done professionally."
He added that Social Security numbers,
which are not intended
for identification, should not be made
available to anyone.
"That's pretty precious info, there's no
question about that,"
Sheehan said about the numbers. "It's just not
private anymore."
Two weeks ago, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals
overturned a $107 million Oregon verdict
against anti-abortion
activists who listed the names and addresses of
local doctors on a
Web site called the Nuremburg Files.
The court ruled that the activists were
not liable unless the
material on the site authorized or threatened
violence.
The Justice Files site, which calls for
police accountability,
condemns violence, Sheehan said.
Since becoming aware of the Web site last
month, hackers
have been able to break through Sheehan's
firewall, delete files
and crash his server. A few high-volume e-mail
attacks were
traced to King County's computer system,
Sheehan said.
"We have our own ways of legally fighting
Bill Sheehan," said
Sgt. John Urquhart, a King County sheriff's
spokesman. "We
certainly wouldn't condone any of our people
doing it."
Last weekend, local media were e-mailed an
Internet address
for a short-lived rebuttal Web site containing
sensitive information
about Sheehan, his business partner, Aaron
Rosenstein, and their
attorney, Elena Garella.
Some of the information on that site was
not from records
accessible to the public.
Garella said that the evidence about the
hacking and the
rebuttal Web site has been turned over to
cybercrime investigators
at the FBI.
While the state Attorney General's Office
has expressed
disappointment with Justice Files, officials
there have not been
asked to investigate the situation from either
side.
But the issue is rapidly attracting
attention because it involves
police officers, society's most visible public
servants.
"It's a debate that needs to take place,"
said Lana Martuscelli,
of the state Attorney General's Office criminal
justice division.
The dilemma facing American society today
is one that weighs
a quick and simple flow of information against
the consequence of
less privacy, she said.
"As consumers, we've become used to
getting things done fast,
like bank loans and credit cards," she said.
But the speed that people enjoy comes at
the expense of
having their sensitive and personal information
out in the void
awaiting anybody's grasp.
Americans who have applied for credit
cards, bank accounts,
or to rent videos have surrendered their Social
Security numbers
to a syndicate of financial institutions and
corporations that have
made the information available to virtually
anyone who can pay for
it.
And this group of companies with economic
interests in the
trafficking of financial information is the
heaviest hitter in political
fund raising, Greeff said.
A survey released last month conducted by
the First
Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University
showed that people
were as concerned about privacy as they are
about health care
and the future of Social Security.
Privacy rights were in vogue around this
time last year in
Congress. The discussion led 41 states to
introduce legislation
calling for protection. Yet none passed.
At this point in the Washington state
Legislature, the only bill
with what supporters call a "fighting chance"
is the attorney
general's proposal of harsher penalties for
identity theft.
"What's being done about privacy can be
summed up in two
words: absolutely nothing," Greef said.
"When you start talking about restricting
personal data your
enemies stack up as follows: credit card
companies ... banks ...
marketing firms ... advertisers ... the
photo-copying businesses ...
even the post office."
http://www.msnbc.com/local/PISEA/M34556.asp?0na=22NX1A0-
