FC: Censorhappy Wash. politicos meet the law of unintended consequences

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Previous Politech message:

"Washington state goes censorhappy, bans publishing police info"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-03324.html

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Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 07:18:18 -0500
To: declan () well com, politech () politechbot com
From: Duncan Frissell <frissell () panix com>
Subject: Re: FC: Washington state goes censorhappy, bans publishing police info

At 12:28 AM 3/29/02 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:
>     {+ NEW SECTION. +}  Sec. 1.  A person or organization shall not,with 
> the intent to harm or intimidate, sell, trade, give, publish,distribute, 
> or otherwise release the residential address, residential telephone 
> number, birthdate, or social security number of any law 
> enforcement-related, corrections officer-related, or court-related 
> employee or volunteer, or someone with a similar name, and categorize 
> them as such, without the express written permission of the employee or 
> volunteer unless specifically exempted by law or court order.

I guess that means that the law enforcers of Washington State will no 
longer be able to have credit records at the big three credit reporting 
agencies since much of that information is obtained and transferred without 
permission.

For example, the credit agencies include the results of public records 
searches (real estate filings, court actions, etc.) in credit records.  It 
will now be a crime to disseminate that info.  Hard for the credit agencies 
to distinguish between all the data that was included with permission and 
that which was not. Easier just to cancel the credit records of the 
protected groups.

DCF





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