FC: Sierra Times article on Kirkland lawsuit against justicefiles.org

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Mon May 21 2001 - 10:43:59 PDT

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    Forwarded by the author. It'll be interesting to see what effect
    today's decision by the Supreme Court in Bartnicki v. Vopper will have
    on Kirkland's pursuit of justicefiles.org and their threats against Politech:
    http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-1687.ZS.html
    
    Background on Kirkland:
    http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=kirkland
    
    -Declan
    
    ---
    
    http://www.sierratimes.com/archive/files/may/20/arsierratimes.htm
    
    Doing Something, Not Just Talking About It!
    Sierra Times Exclusive Report 05.20.01
       
       When it comes to public facts, some animals are more equal than others
       
       It's now 2001, not 1961; this isn't Mayberry, R.F.D., and relatively
       few people remember that even Officer Barney Fife got respect when he
       said "Come along, now." Patrolling the streets now are police who have
       been trained in paramilitary tactics and carry weapons provided by the
       Department of Defense. Rather than being an integrated part of the
       community, law enforcement has migrated to the model of military
       "peacekeeping" seen in Serbia. Instead of being integrated into and
       accountable to the communities in which they operate, police forces
       are assuming many of the characteristics of an occupational army.
       
       A lot of people all over the political spectrum have grumbled about
       the dramatic change, but like the weather, nobody has done anything
       about it. Except Bill Sheehan. Sheehan, a network engineer and
       libertarian who resides in a suburb of Seattle, sought the names,
       title, and salaries of law enforcement personnel at a number of
       Seattle-area agencies under the state of Washington's Open Records
       Act, and has republished the information on the web. Sheehan
       cross-matched the data he obtained to publicly available records to
       obtain the home addresses and social security numbers. To find
       addresses, he used common internet search engines such as Yahoo people
       search. Social Security numbers were obtained from one of the many
       services that freely sell such information for as little as a buck.
       Sheehan also linked an embarrassing number of officers to their
       bankruptcy and criminal records.
       
       It's all legally public available information. So why is Sheehan being
       sued multiple times to take down his web site? Simple: those filing
       the lawsuits believe that public information should be treated as
       private when it comes to law enforcement. In their lawsuit against
       Sheehan, the city of Kirkland, Washington, maintained that listing
       social security numbers, home phone numbers and addresses would lead
       to harassment of officers and identity theft. Elena Garella, Sheehan's
       attorney, pointedly remarked that "anyone who tries to steal the
       identity of a police officer would have to be incredibly stupid."
       
       Sheehan's effort to increase police accountability through publishing
       the names of law enforcement personnel started 18 months ago when he
       learned how to use Open Records Act requests. In April and May, 2000,
       he filed requests with a number of cities in King County, and with the
       King County sheriff's department, asking for public information. All
       of the cities except Pacific initially provided the requested
       information, but the King County Sheriff's Office and the King County
       Jail refused. The Act requires that a public agency release such
       information within 5 working days. The city of Pacific claims that
       they are waiting for a decision in the King County case.
       
       King County did respond by filing suit against Sheehan on May 13,
       2000, although they did not serve him until the following July. The
       case was heard by King County Court Judge Michael J. Fox in November
       of last year. Fox ordered the county to turn over the last names of
       the officers. King County refused, and has appealed the decision. That
       appeal is pending. However, King County has seriously hurt their case
       by failing to file for a stay in time. Should King County lose the
       appeal, the county can be held liable for $100/day penalty for
       withholding the information. "For all intents and purposes," Sheehan
       says, "it means that they are in contempt of court."
       
       An early Fourth of July
       
       But the real fireworks show started on March 17, 2001, when Sheehan
       went live with his web site. Almost instantly, Justicefiles was hit by
       a barrage of hacking attempts and denial of service attacks. Sheehan
       and his partner, Aaron Rosenstein, both experienced network engineers,
       easily managed to keep the attacks from overwhelming their server. It
       was somewhat harder to defeat the pressure on their ISP, who received
       many calls from people asking that the site be taken down. The ISP did
       stand by justicefiles, however Sheehan is looking for another provider
       who can handle higher traffic loads. The site did temporarily go down
       when the domain registrar, DomainDiscover, caved in to pressure and
       unregistered his sites. Sheehan immediately reregistered the sites
       with domainbank.com and the site was back up within a day.
       
       Some denial of service attacks were traced to the King County computer
       system. Evidence of the attacks was turned over to the FBI, which
       appears to be actively pursuing the case.
    
    [...]
    
    
    
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