Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Editorial: Now, safeguard the information
Law to prevent publication of Social Security numbers should have targeted officials, not a critic.
From the RoundTable blog
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A federal judge has ruled unconstitutional a 2008 law passed by the General Assembly restricting the ability of private citizens to disseminate information legally obtained from a public agency.
On its face, the law sounded reasonable: It prohibited private citizens from posting Social Security numbers and other potentially sensitive information about others online.
Except that the private citizen the law appeared specifically aimed at -- Betty "B.J." Ostergren, a Virginia-based privacy advocate -- obtained that sensitive information from the Web sites of public agencies.
Her point in posting the information was to protest lax policies that allowed it online in the first place.
Ostergren posted the Social Security numbers of public figures that she had found in online records: Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Secretary of State Colin Powell -- and several Virginia county clerks, the people who should be redacting such information before making it available online.
The General Assembly could, and should, have passed a law to ensure that such sensitive information is redacted from public records before state and local agencies put them online.
Instead, they went after Ostergren. With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, she sued after the law took effect.
Last Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Robert E. Payne ruled that the law violated her First Amendment rights.
"Both the ACLU and Ms. Ostergren support laws that prevent the government from allowing Social Security numbers to appear on publicly accessible Web sites," said ACLU of Virginia Executive Director Kent Willis. "But the government can't make these records available to the public then restrict what the public does with them. That violates free speech."
Now that the law has been struck down, the General Assembly should get to work fixing the very serious issue that Ostergren has been working so diligently to expose.
State law should require state and local agencies to redact information -- such as Social Security numbers, mothers' maiden names, etc. -- that could be used by strangers for nefarious purposes before officials post public records online.
