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I’ve heard from a number of law enforcement offices who are upset that they can find their private information on “white pages” and “people finder” websites around the Internet. They feel violated when they find their name, address, phone number, and even credit score online at sites like Spokeo, Wink, Intelius, Spock, Rapleaf, Whitepages, Zabasearch, and Pipl. They’ve said that they feel endangered when photos of their home are out there on the Internet for anyone to see.
I agree fully. And for me, it’s personal too: my fiancee works in law enforcement and her safety means the world to me. That’s why I believe in the Reputation.com mission to remove unwanted personal information from the Internet.
Let me tell you a little about why this topic means so much to me. A few years ago, I fell in love with the most beautiful woman in the world. Shortly after we met, she decided to join the law enforcement community. It was a big decision for her, and I’m glad she made it. She loves helping the community by getting criminals off the street and into rehabilitation. Every day, her job makes the world a better place.
But her job also comes with some serious drawbacks. Today, she works serious felonies. These are the kinds of felonies that trigger threats against investigating agents’ lives and families. Some of her peers have even gotten threatening phone calls at home, late at night. Thank G-d, so far, nothing bad has happened to anyone we know, but we understand the fear that every law enforcement officer has to live with.
We’ve tried to do our best to keep our personal information private: we send our mail to a P.O. box, we don’t turn in product registration cards, we don’t make political donations that will be reported on sites like FundRace, and we make sure that as many public records as possible are officially redacted. But even doing that, it was still possible to find some records of my fiancee’s name and address online.
That’s when we signed up for the MyPrivacy Pro service. The MyPrivacy Pro service allowed us to quickly find and eliminate most of the remaining references to her name and address online. And, it removed other information too—like her credit profile from Spokeo and a few old address records that we didn’t even know were out there.
I’m proud of services like MyPrivacy that help law enforcement officers remove this information from the Internet. We use it in our family to help reduce the amount of personal information that can be found about us online. And the company is proud to offer law enforcement officers and judicial officers the chance to use the MyPrivacy service absolutely free. It’s our way of thanking the law enforcement community for their hard work. If you are a law enforcement or judicial officer, give us a call at 877-720-6488 and we’ll sign you up for free. If you’re not in law enforcement, you can still get the same powerful service here for a low rate.
I’ll also put this out there on the record, officially: Reputation.com does not provide phone numbers, addresses, or other information about private individuals to sites like WhitePages, PeopleFinder, ZabaSearch, Rapleaf, Pipl, Wink, Intelius, or Spokeo. Not only would that go against our core mission, I simply would not allow the company to put my fiancee’s life in danger.
If you’re on the West Coast, I hope to see you at B2V in a few weeks. Thank you for your hard work in support of our communities.
It showed the life story of a man, all through his Google searches. He traveled to Paris (“study abroad Paris”), met a woman at a restaurant (“cafes near the Louvre”), fell in love (“how to impress French girls”), seduced her (“chocolate shop near Paris France”), moved to France (flight tracking), got married (“churches in Paris”), and eventually had a child (“how to assemble a crib”).
What’s creepy about this? It’s proof that your Google searches can be enough to reconstruct your life history. All of it. And this was just the highlights. Imagine if our mystery searcher had searched for more personal information — how to deal with grief, the loss of a child, sexual confusion, a disease, a long-lost love, or more? Google knows all of it. Google knows how you feel, what you think, and what you do.
And even if Google itself doesn’t read your search history, it’s still out there and vulnerable to eavesdropping or hacking (remember Google’s allegations that someone in China hacked their servers and stole personal data?)
I think Google meant the ad to show that it is powerful.
Instead, it gave me the heebie-jeebies. It’s an everyday reminder that Google knows pretty much everything there is to know about you. And that this data is stored on servers around the world, where it could be mis-used by nearly anyone. (TechCrunch says that it’s proof that hell froze over.)
News comes today that Facebook is fighting against a subpoena issued in a Missouri murder case.
In short, former police officer Bryan Pour was accused of murder after a shooting at a bar in St. Louis. He is currently facing trial. He claims that he is innocent, and that he can prove that the investigating officers were biased because they were friends with the witnesses to the shooting. His theory, presumably, is that the investigating officers wanted to protect their friends (who were present at the bar at the time of the shooting) and so they shifted the blame to him.
To find out, Bryan Pour’s lawyer subpoenaed Facebook to find out if any of the investigating officers were “Facebook friends” with any of the witnesses who were present at the bar, and if they had any other interactions on the site. Of course, all of the investigating officers have since made their profiles private or deleted them, so a subpoena is the only way Pour can find out if his accusers are biased.
Facebook has announced that it will fight the subpoena and refuse to turn over the information.
There is a deep conflict brewing: Facebook claims that it has a duty to protect the privacy of its users; Pour claims that he has a Due Process right to find out if his accusers are biased.
This isn’t the first privacy issue involving Facebook and certainly won’t be the last. This one just adds the additional layer of criminal justice, and Facebook’s attempts to protect its users from the government; one wonders if Facebook would have the same stance if advertisers wanted the same information?
Today, the California Court of Appeals released a sweeping opinion vindicating the Catsouras family in their lawsuit against the California Highway Patrol.
The facts are brief, but tragic. Nicole “Nikki” Catsouras was an 18-year-old driver in Orange County, California. She was killed in gruesome car accident. Two California Highway Patrol officers took photos of Nicole Catsouras’s body at the scene of the accident, as part of their official investigation. But, the officers are then alleged to have emailed these photos to a group of friends as a Halloween prank, solely for the “shock value” of the images. These friends then spread them to a wider audience. Soon, the photos were available on hundreds of websites and anonymous trolls and cowards used the images to taunt the surviving members of the Catsouras family — including by sending the graphic images by email to Nicole Catsouras’s father and siblings.
“The CHP should know better. Every one of its officers should know better. The CHP is in a position to ensure that this does not happen again.” – California Court of Appeal in Catsouras v. CHP
The Catsouras family was shocked to find that police had leaked official investigation photos in such an inappropriate manner. The Catsouras family filed a lawsuit against the California Highway Patrol (CHP) and the two officers on the scene. The lawsuit alleged that the CHP invaded the family’s privacy by emailing gruesome photos of Nicole to people with no law enforcement interest in the photos, that the family suffered massive emotional distress, and that CHP failed to create or enforce policies protecting the privacy of families.
The Catsouras’s lawsuit against the CHP and officers was initially rejected by the trial court. The trial court ruled that the CHP had no duty to protect photographs of the dead, and that the family could not bring a lawsuit.
The Catsouras’s suit was reinstated by the California Court of Appeal. The California Court of Appeal sharply chastised the CHP and its officers for emailing gory photos outside their official duties, and reinstated all but one of the Catsouras’s claims. The California Court of Appeal held that the CHP and its officers are liable for invasion of privacy if they unnecessarily publicize gory photos of the deceased without any legitimate law enforcement purpose, especially when there is no legitimate public interest in the gory phtoos. The court also held that it is entirely predictable that gory photos emailed to a small group might be spread to a wider audience, especially if the photos are gory or otherwise shocking. The court went out of its way to say that the CHP officers should have known better than to publicize gruesome photos to a group of people outside of law enforcement, and that the officers and CHP are now liable for the entirely predictable consequences. The duty of the CHP to treat the dead with respect is independent from their duty as law enforcement; instead, it is a duty that all people have.
The case will now be remanded for a trial; it is likely that the case will settle before it reaches trial.
Instant analysis:
This case is an important step toward the law recognizing the harms that can be caused by the Internet.
The case also shows how difficult it is for many victims of Internet attacks to find justice. The trial court initially rejected any liability for the shocking conduct of the officers — holding that a family could not sue even when officers took graphic photos and emailed them to friends solely for their shock value. It took the California Court of Appeals stepping in to give justice to the Catsouras family.
The case is also an important reminder that real people can be harmed by online pranks — there is a real victim when photos of Nicole Catsouras’s body are emailed to her father with taunting messages. The impersonal nature of the Internet often makes it seem like nobody “real” is harmed by online actions — everything done online is done through a web browser.
“[C]oncepts of morals and justice clearly dictate that those upon whom we rely to protect and serve ought not to be permitted to make our deceased loved ones the subject of Internet spectacle and then to claim the defense of lack of duty.” - California Court of Appeal in Catsouras v. CHP
The case is also legal recognition of what we all should already know: the anonymous and impersonal nature of the Internet empowers malicious attacks and content. The California Court of Appeals ruled that it is entirely predictable that a gory photo emailed to a group of people will be spread all over the Internet and used to abuse an innocent family. Online, a photo spread to a small group be quickly spread to hundreds of websites and millions of viewers, well beyond the reach of any one person. As soon as they emailed the photos, the officers lost the ability to stop the chain events that they set in motion. They may not have intended the photos to reach a massive audience, but their actions started a predictable chain reaction that led to massive emotional abuse of the Catsouras family.
It will be interesting to see if any individuals who spread the photos can be found and prosecuted; now, it is in the interest of the California Highway Patrol to find as many as possible so that it may recoup its losses against them.
Key takeaways:
The California Court of Appeal vindicated the Catsouras’s legal claims;
The California Court of Appeal went out of its way to chastise the CHP for its conduct in this case, and for its legalistic defenses in light of the horrific facts of the case;
The California Court of Appeal held that it is an invasion of privacy to publicize gory photos of the deceased when there is no legitimate law enforcement purpose or legitimate public interest;
The California Court of Appeal held that the CHP and CHP officers have a duty to not unreasonably publicize photos of the deceased for their shock value;
The California Court of Appeal held that the CHP officers were negligent and should have known better; the court held that it was entirely predictable that photos emailed to a group of friends and family for their “gruesome shock value” would be spread to a wider audience and used to torment the family;
The California Court of Appeal held that families of the deceased can assert a right to privacy regarding photos of the deceased; the court squarely rejected CHP’s attempt to hide behind a legal doctrine suggesting that only the deceased could sue (which, of course, is impossible);
The CHP and officers may be liable for emotional distress damages;
There is no First Amendment issue because only the conduct of the CHP is at issue and there is no press defendant;
The case was remanded for a trial and to calculate damages;
The case will likely settle on terms favorable to the Catsouras family.
If you have questions about this story, please contact Reputation.com. Comments will be strictly moderated in light of the subject matter of the story.
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