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

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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

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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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