Date: Sat, 19 May 2001 12:16:07 -0400 From: freematt@coil.com (Matthew Gaylor) Subject: Kirkland, WA Police Threaten Declan McCullagh's Politech with To: freematt@coil.com (Matthew Gaylor)
Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 20:15:23 -0400 From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: politech@politechbot.com Cc: webmaster@ci.kirkland.wa.us, citycouncil@ci.kirkland.wa.us Subject: FC: Kirkland police threaten Politech with lawsuit Mail-Followup-To: webmaster@ci.kirkland.wa.us,citycouncil@ci.kirklnd.wa.us URL: Politech is at http://www.politechbot.com/ Author: Declan McCullagh is at http://www.mccullagh.org/ News-Site: Cluebot is at http://www.cluebot.com/
The city of Kirkland, Washington has decided it doesn't want publicly-available information about its police officers to be, well, public. On May 14, Kirkland's lawyers sent me a letter ordering me to delete three Social Security numbers of Kirkland police officers from a Politech article from last week or risk a lawsuit.
I believe journalists and others generally should have the right to reprint information from public court documents, and attempts to curtail the First Amendment in the name of privacy go too far. The fine folks at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (rcfp.org) put me in touch with Bruce Johnson and his colleagues at Davis Wright Tremaine (dwt.com), which has a strong First Amendment practice.
Bruce responded with a letter to Kirkland saying that journalists should be allowed to republish information they obtained lawfully. He wrote that: "Mr. McCullagh intends to exercise his First Amendment rights notwithstanding your letter." But Kirkland was undeterred, saying in their reply this week that they "stand by" their cease-and-desist-or-else threat.
This case is important because it highlights how nebulous "privacy rights" can be used to limit free expression. Instead of trying to muzzle reporters, society should be trying to eliminate the Social Security number's widespread use as a personal identifier, which it was not intended to be. (Rep. Ron Paul's Identity Theft Protection Act, H.R.220, is a good first step.) If Kirkland gets its way, this precedent could be used to prevent reporters from printing other personal information, such as addresses or ages, that they find newsworthy or relevant in their coverage.
You can see news coverage of Kirkland's legal threats here: http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/165907.html
The Politech article that is in danger of being taken down if Kirkland wins an injunction: http://www.politechbot.com/p-02008.html
All the documents are online here: http://www.politechbot.com/kirkland/
-Declan Editor, Politech May 18, 2001
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if it remains intact. To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
>Judge Robert H. Alsdorf of King County, Washington believes it is illegal
>to republish Social Security numbers taken from public court records. I'm
>including in this post a few SSNs from the justicefiles.org site:
>
> >Blinsink Steven Harold 239-41-9528 Aug-70 Patrol Police Officer IV
> >Beath Brian B. 537-46-2392 Feb-47 Police Support Officer $2,619.00
> >Coleman Ronald L. 536-68-6894 Apr-59 Master Police Officer $4,690.00
>
>I believe that same information is available from public court records and
>other lawful public sources, and I'm including it here for journalistic
>purposes -- to demonstrate what kind of information the site in question has.
>
>This post will be archived at http://www.politechbot.com/p-02008.html
>
>I invite the city of Kirkland, copied above, to respond.
>
>-Declan
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