News: Court Says Posting PII Online is Cool -- First Amendment Cool

[David Shettler <dave () opensecurityfoundation org>]

http://datalossdb.org/incident_highlights/47-court-says-posting-pii-online-is-cool-first-amendment-cool

I'm going to have to apologize in advance for the extreme use of
ellipses here. I'm frankly confused as can be over this blog post, and
the result is aggressive punctuation.

In what seems to be one of the most ridiculous situations we've read
about recently, the Richmond Times reports
(http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/article/SSNS24_20100323-223006/332515/
) that a U.S. District Court judge has ruled that a woman posting
Social Security numbers of government workers online was, well...
*cough*... *pains me to type this*...protected by the First Amendment.
Yes... posting PII online is protected by the First Amendment. The
judge ordered the state of Virginia to halt prosecution against her
for doing so. The state has appealed, and a three judge panel is
reviewing the appeal.

This is only part of the ridiculousness. This Virginia woman...

[snip]
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