FC: Hackers apparently nab justicefiles.org and repost police SSNs

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Last week, Judge Robert H. Alsdorf ordered justicefiles.org to delete
Social Security numbers of police officers from its web site. (The
case, as you probably recall, was brought by the city of Kirkland,
Washington, and my Politech article about the ruling is what drew
legal threats from their lawyers this week.)

But now the SSNs for Kirkland and other police officers are back
online at justicefiles.org:
http://www.justicefiles.org/Kirkland/Kirkland%20SSN.asp

Details are still sketchy, but a reliable source tells me that it
wasn't intentional. The story goes like this, according to the source:
Bill Sheehan, publisher of justicefiles.org, was approached by someone
claiming to be affiliated with hackers-for-hire.com.
Hackers-for-hire.com is based in Toronto, Canada. They offered a cheap
web hosting deal, and Bill took it. But once the site was up -- and,
crucially, the domain name switched over -- to their server, Bill got
locked out and the SSNs reappeared. Now the SSNs are online in
arguable violation of the court order, and Bill wants everyone to know
that he can't take them down even if he wanted to, and he does. Bill
is trying to change the DNS to point to a legal version of the site,
and has contacted Domain Bank, but DNS changes take some time to
propagate

My command-line whois query shows that the record was updated
Thursday, and justicefiles.org has three DNS servers listed:
NS1.GRANITECANYON.COM, DNS.ZENCOR.ORG, and
DNS-1.EXTREME-FREAK-SHOW.COM.

Oddly, a query of Network Solution's whois database shows their record
was updated Friday, and includes just two servers:
DEMOS.JUSTICEFILES.ORG and NS1.JUSTICEFILES.ORG. Those appear to be
inside the network of eli.net, a Washington state firm. See for
yourself:
http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois?STRING=justicefiles.org

Translation: The SSNs are back and may remain there for up to 24 hours
while activists gleefuly mirror the content -- unless Bill can persuade
a bunch of Toronto hackers that they should take a U.S. judge's order
seriously. Fat chance.

Also, I wanted to thank everyone who emailed support for my own legal
battle with Kirkland. It's heartening to know that there are so many
people who care about free speech, though we should all be doing
something else on a Friday night. :)

-Declan 



-------------------------------------------------------------------------
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/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------