FC: Hackers apparently nab justicefiles.org and repost police SSNs

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Fri May 18 2001 - 21:35:28 PDT

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    Last week, Judge Robert H. Alsdorf ordered justicefiles.org to delete
    Social Security numbers of police officers from its web site. (The
    case, as you probably recall, was brought by the city of Kirkland,
    Washington, and my Politech article about the ruling is what drew
    legal threats from their lawyers this week.)
    
    But now the SSNs for Kirkland and other police officers are back
    online at justicefiles.org:
    http://www.justicefiles.org/Kirkland/Kirkland%20SSN.asp
    
    Details are still sketchy, but a reliable source tells me that it
    wasn't intentional. The story goes like this, according to the source:
    Bill Sheehan, publisher of justicefiles.org, was approached by someone
    claiming to be affiliated with hackers-for-hire.com.
    Hackers-for-hire.com is based in Toronto, Canada. They offered a cheap
    web hosting deal, and Bill took it. But once the site was up -- and,
    crucially, the domain name switched over -- to their server, Bill got
    locked out and the SSNs reappeared. Now the SSNs are online in
    arguable violation of the court order, and Bill wants everyone to know
    that he can't take them down even if he wanted to, and he does. Bill
    is trying to change the DNS to point to a legal version of the site,
    and has contacted Domain Bank, but DNS changes take some time to
    propagate
    
    My command-line whois query shows that the record was updated
    Thursday, and justicefiles.org has three DNS servers listed:
    NS1.GRANITECANYON.COM, DNS.ZENCOR.ORG, and
    DNS-1.EXTREME-FREAK-SHOW.COM.
    
    Oddly, a query of Network Solution's whois database shows their record
    was updated Friday, and includes just two servers:
    DEMOS.JUSTICEFILES.ORG and NS1.JUSTICEFILES.ORG. Those appear to be
    inside the network of eli.net, a Washington state firm. See for
    yourself:
    http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois?STRING=justicefiles.org
    
    Translation: The SSNs are back and may remain there for up to 24 hours
    while activists gleefuly mirror the content -- unless Bill can persuade
    a bunch of Toronto hackers that they should take a U.S. judge's order
    seriously. Fat chance.
    
    Also, I wanted to thank everyone who emailed support for my own legal
    battle with Kirkland. It's heartening to know that there are so many
    people who care about free speech, though we should all be doing
    something else on a Friday night. :)
    
    -Declan 
    
    
    
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