Hacker Movie Has Lots of Cracks
Hollywood is putting out a new hacker movie with John Travolta. "Swordfish" isn't as bad as it sounds, however. It actually distinguishes between hackers and crackers. By Michelle Delio.

Thats www.wired.com (igoogle)

...for assasination politics.(my 2 p worth)

stolen by barking owl for SOFT DRILL


Free Speech, or Cop Harassment?
by Declan McCullagh


10:05 a.m. Apr. 5, 2001 PDT
TACOMA, Washington -- A city government has sued a local website that
highlights personal information about police, saying the publisher has violated cops' privacy rights.


Kirkland, Washington, hopes to shut down justicefiles.org, which
includes information such as officers' names, salaries and, in some cases, home addresses.


City officials insist that unless a King County Superior Court judge
slaps publisher Bill Sheehan with punishing fines, the local police will be intimidated and new hires could be scared off.


There's just one problem with that argument: The information on
justicefiles.org appears to be obtained from court records and other government databases.


"All of it comes from either state or government sources. A minority
is purchased from private corporations that advertise on the Web," says Elena Garella, an attorney for Sheehan. "Absolutely it's all lawful sources."


Wired News used a spider to download the contents of justicefiles.org.
They amount to about 1.3 MB of HTML files, and appear to be almost entirely public-records information about salaries or information obtained from the federal Pacer system about, for instance, bankrupcty filings.


That raises the intriguing legal question of whether it's legal for a
publisher such as Sheehan, a local network engineer, to distribute a single copy of a court record -- but actionable if he amasses an archive of hundreds of documents.


The phenomenon of activists placing personal information online has
sparked a flurry of lawsuits in the courts, and most seem to be siding on the side of free speech when information is already public.


Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals -- which includes
Washington state -- ruled that a website sporting the home addresses of doctors who performed abortions did not violate the First Amendment. In the opinion, Judge Alex Kozinski wrote that "political speech may not be punished just because it makes it more likely that someone will be harmed at some unknown time in the future by an unrelated third party."


Political essayist Jim Bell is on trial this week in Tacoma,
Washington in a similar trial that involves his alleged use of legally-obtained CD-ROMs to compile information about IRS agents. He is not accused of directly threatening them, but the government says that by collecting information about agents and by refusing to renounce his writings about how to assassinate unethical federal employees, Bell is guilty of violating "stalking" laws.


In the justicefiles.org case, city officials have likened the
publication of police home numbers and SSNs to shouting fire in a crowded theater.


Garella, the defense attorney, says: "How can we be invading your
privacy when this information is publicly available to begin with? You assumed the risk when you gave out your social security number and address to the government and private corporations who trade in that information."


Garella said that police have repeatedly complained to Internet
service providers hosting the site, which she said has been repeatedly hit by attacks from malicious hackers. "The FBI is now investigating to find out who is doing that," she said.


Related Wired Links:


When Reporting Becomes Testifying
Mar. 30, 2001


'Cyber-Terrorist' Jailed Again
Nov. 21, 2000


IRS Raids Cypherpunk's House
Nov. 11, 2000

Quit before they get to you.
It will not be pretty!

.

LOL thats funny. . . I doubt anyone actually contacted you. & i hope you cover your tracks.


as long as you dont enter the oddzone, you are OK