FC: Kirkland police threaten Politech with lawsuit

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well 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



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