THE VIRGINIA WATCHDOGTM
Our Mission More articles Records with SSNs Hot links For Hanover County Residents Email us
Your SSN is just a click away on the world wide web and it was most likely put there by some stupid elected official. And your health information is next. Go to more news articles in our archives and see examples of records put online by courts and other state agencies. Yours could be online somewhere right now. Many state agencies across the country like New York, Colorado, and Pennsylvania have SSNs online today available to anyone, anywhere in the world.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Update 12/0809 8:30 PM EST - MS State Senator Merle Flowers had this to say in a report tonight on WREG TV. His and his wife's SSNs were found on that site...read below posts to see that record.
Update - 12/08/09 9:30AM EST - "Sluggo" Davis of Desoto Co, MS admits that he has 500,000 records online and that up to 10% contain SSNs. Well, "Sluggo", even though you don't have as many SSNs online as Leatherwood next door, you still have online at least 50,000 and maybe more since a lot of those Deeds and mortgages contain two SSNs. DUHhhhh. Stupid is as stupid does. But this same thing is going on all over this country. And the Tax Assessor there (Parker Pickle) has a portal to those records that he needs to close. Otherwise he should go too in the next election.
Update - 12/07/09 8 PM EDT - WREG covers issue in Desoto County, MS. Both the Chancery Clerk and the Tax Assessor should shut their sites down since both have SSNs on them.
BREAKING NEWS!!! 12/07/09 - MORE STUPID ELECTED OFFICIALS....Following on the heels of the recent mess with the SSNs online in Shelby County, The Virginia Watchdog has discovered that the Desoto County, MS Chancery Clerk, W.E. "Sluggo" Davis, and the Tax Assessor, James Parker Pickle, are also spoon feeding criminals world wide. Here is an example of one record belonging to a State Senator found on the Chancery Clerk's site. And if you miss the SSNs on that record, here are two more (#1 and #2) for the same Senator. There are many SSNs on the sites on deeds from the 90s, mortgages from the 90s and some in the early 2000s, and also on Federal tax liens. Read this to find out more about Shelby County and the SSNs they are spoon feeding to the world. And how many others in that area are doing the same thing? Why isn't either the TN legislature or the Mississippi legislature stopping these Clerks and Tax Assessors from publishing people's SSNs.
UPDATE 12/02/09 - 9:20 PM EST WREG reports today that Shelby County, TN residents are demanding that their SSNs be removed off the Shelby Register of Deeds Property records search site. Watch the video and read the transcript for the latest follow up to their piece from yesterday. Leatherwood still refuses to shut down his site and protect tens of thousands of SSNs. Read our original article on this here. People have to spread the word and make sure everyone in Memphis area knows this is going on. Email all your friends - even if they have left Shelby County or Memphis. And people should be thanking WREG TV - Channel 3 and Scott Noll. He's the one we called and he ran with the ball and covered the situation in depth. Yes, the SSNs are on public records but Leatherwood should have taken off the SSNs before putting them on the internet. This same thing is happening all over Tennessee and your state legisature has done nothing to force the Registers of Deeds to protect the SSNs. They should be ousted also along with Leatherwood. Also keep this in mind - Leatherwood's SSN was never on a document. We looked.
UPDATE 12/01/09 - 8:40 PM EST WREG TV in Memphis covers the mess in Shelby Co., TN where tens of thousands of SSNs are online there... See the video and read the transcript. QUESTION: How would Leatherwood know whether or not someone's identity has been stolen because of his spoon feeding criminals? He wouldn't.
UPDATE 12/01/09 - 11 AM EST - Shelby County Register of Deeds Tom Leatherwood continues to spoon feed criminals tens and tens of thousands of SSNs on his website. This same thing is happening all over the USA - not just in Memphis, TN. Why are we so stupid in this country to allow elected officials like Tom Leatherwood to put SSNs on the internet? It's a veritable treasure trove of SSNs but he won't take the site down or remove the images.
11/16/09 - The latest King of Stupid for spoon feeding criminals worldwide is TOM LEATHERWOOD of Shelby County, TN (Memphis area) who is spoon feeding criminals worldwide thousands of social security numbers on his website. Click here to read more and see some SSNs gotten off his site which belong to elected officials but are on PUBLIC records.
Phone calls were placed this morning to Leatherwood's office and he did not take the calls. I spoke to his office coordinator, secretary, and some others and asked them to shut down the site. His office coordinator, Fred Beckham, said "That's not going to happen." I told them they were spoon feeding SSNs to anyone in the world. Apparently, they don't care...
________________________________
Go to more news articles on this site about SSNs online thanks to stupid elected or appointed officials.
________________________________
7/31/09 - A memo to our readers: Congressman Robert Wexler has become a target of an extortion plot by a man from Ghana who supposedly got his and wife's SSN off a public record supposedly from this site. For anyone who is still in the dark or has their head stuck in the sand about SSNs being put online by elected or appointed state gov't officials, this site and its founder for seven years has been trying to stop this hemorrhaging of SSNs. In VA, the Virginia General Assembly apparently wants this personal info online since they have NOT passed any laws mandating the removal of SSNs - much less even appropriating the funding for redaction programs to black them out. Instead they passed a law aimed at this site and its founder which caused us to file suit in federal court. We won, but the AG has now appealed it to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. (See bottom of this page for more on that lawsuit.)
Records are put online by state officials all over the U.S. because they are public records. It has already happened in every state - not just VA. Records with too much personal info are online now and available in anyone's home all over the world. But elected officials did it without protecting the people by removing or blacking out the personal info like SSNs.
The big story today should not be that Congressman Wexler and his wife have become victims. No the big story should be that thanks to stupid elected officials like Court Clerks, Recorders, or Secretaries of States, these records are made available on the internet without protecting SSNs.
Just yesterday, The Virginia Watchdog's founder found the same documents for one major U.S. corporation and their top brass on TWELVE different state government websites. The same list of SSNs and home addresses for the top execs appeared on government websites in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and South Dakota. And each year that the company filed a report within those states, the same 40+ SSNs show up on the documents... all open to the world...and anyone in Ghana, too. (Note: NC attempted to redact the numbers but failed miserably.)
But there are many corporations' top execs' SSNs on the world wide web on public records on these state sites...and also many plain old Joe Schmoes', too. It's just that not one of them know it and then they will wonder how someone got their SSN number when their identity is compromised.
We live in an ignorant country where people vote like crazy for the American Idol, or know every stat for football teams or basketball teams, but they don't pay attention to what really matters. Some Americans cannot let important issues in this country get in the way of a soccer game. People in this country pay more attention to sports than to what our legislators are doing. Most people don't even bother to get out and vote in America. Heck, most people don't even read a newspaper nowadays. It's evident. And we have dumbed down our education system so bad, it's pitiful. Sure there are exceptions to the rule but for the most part, kids coming out of High school don't even know how to conjugate a verb. Their grammar is atrocious.
It is truly sad the predicament we are in and yet most people don't want to do anything about it. Let someone else do it seems to be the motto in this country. Bill Maher said just the other day "Americans are stupid." He's right and I know many people who are both Republican and Democrat who agree with him. He is right for many, many reasons including the fact that gov't agencies are putting or have put SSNs on the internet for the world to see and very few of us even give a damn. Where's the public outcry? The same people screwing us just keep getting re-elected. It's amazing we have such people running our counties, states, and the U.S. government!
But state legislatures this is your issue. When are you going to wake up and smell the coffee about these records and the info they hold? We already know Virginia legislators didn't like having their info on this site, but yet they didn't want to deal with the little guys' SSNs on the Clerks' sites or else they would have passed a law mandating removal of SSNs and other personal info like what shows up in many court Clerk held documents that are public. They passed that law in 2008 trying to shut us up on this website instead of protecting 100% of all the citizens.
Go to our archives for many articles about this since January 2003. We have been waging this battle for seven years and still the Virginia General Assembly won't listen. That is a shame because the founder of this site knows more about online records than anyone in the USA. She can prove it...and has many times. This is not to say we haven't had many victories all over the country with this issue. We have, but there are still many government websites spoon feeding criminals.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
* Read this article which was recently in Computerworld about SSNs and other personal info online that features BJ Ostergren, founder of The Virginia Watchdog.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
* To all United States citizens - many counties and states in the U.S.A have done the same thing as mentioned above - except in most other states the websites are open and free to anyone anywhere in the world. Yes, the records are public, in general circulation, and easy to obtain lawfully. No need to dumpster dive or break any laws to find SSNs because government agencies are spoon feeding this information to everyone.
Take for example the state of Maryland. There are three websites in that state hosted by government agencies which are loaded with SSNs and apparently no one there in power will do anything about the hemorrhaging of SSNs on those sites. Phone calls have been made to people about this problem and news stories have been written about it. The records are for free in that state and the three sites are linked here and here (Update 10/7/08: The Maryland Judiciary on this link has finally redacted the SSNs that are on this site to just the last four digits) and here. In the third link, click on the county you want then look for this link - "Search County Land Record Indices, Jan. 3, 1977 - Aug 22, 2008 (verified through Aug 21, 2008)."
The answer we get when we call people who either are a legislator or keeper of the records is that they are public records and they will remain online complete with the SSNs - except in one case. On this link, the current Maryland Attorney General had his SSN blacked out while literally thousands of others remain - including some Maryland legislators' SSNs. Here is a Washington Post story about the Maryland situation.
The Virginia Watchdog's founder has downloaded many SSNs off this site. Other states are just as bad as Maryland and they don't seem to "get it" when it comes to protecting SSNs. If the government wants to spoon feed SSNs to the world, they are doing a great job of it and have been for years.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
* To all Virginia citizens past and present - As of July 1, all Virginia Circuit Court Clerks now have remote access to deeds, mortgages, tax liens, name change documents, Powers of Attorney, Wills plus other probate records (complete with bank account numbers), judgments, etc. All of these records contain a lot of personal information. Anyone can sign up to gain access to the records which contain SSNs, DOBs, mother's maiden names, minor children's names, financial account numbers, and signatures. The citizens of VA have paid for the records to be put online once through fees collected by the Clerks, but you will have to pay a fee again to get access to the remote access systems. That in itself is discriminatory since if you don't have $$$, you cannot gain access to records required by law to be open to everyone. You will have to drive to a courthouse to see records that others are looking at from their homes or offices. (Another case of the "haves" winning and the "have nots" losing out.) And even the "Feds" created records with SSNs on them which are available on the World Wide Web.
Some Clerks claim they have blacked out the SSNs. Hanover County's Circuit Court Clerk, Frank Hargrove, Jr., was one of the Clerks named in an affidavit in sworn to by the Clerks' Association lobbyist saying that about 100 Clerks had already blacked out or redacted the SSNs from the records online. The lobbyist gave the sworn affidavit on behalf of the VA AG in Ostergren's lawsuit. The only problem is that the Hanover Circuit Court Clerk had NOT blacked out all SSNs and this was proven by this site's founder, editor and publisher on July 15th when she accessed his remote access site and found several SSNs in just a matter of minutes. The Clerk in a telecon with Mrs. Ostergren on July 16th told her he knew he had missed some SSNs, but a search of his own personal records on his site showed his and his wife's SSNs had been protected by being blacked out on a Deed of Trust as well as his brother's and his wife's on two other documents. And so had his father's legislative aide's and his wife's also on a Deed of Trust been protected.
Read more articles about this issue all the way back to 2003.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
* Regarding our court case to keep YOU informed...
June 2, 2009...We won! Federal District Judge Robert E. Payne rules in favor of BJ Ostergren and grants injunction to her so the state cannot take away her First Amendment rights. In his decision, he slaps the state hard. Read the Memorandum Opinion and Injunctive Order in that lawsuit. A clear, unequivocal victory for this website and BJ. The ACLU represented us and we would like people to donate to them now. Richmond Times-Dispatch has this article about the decision.
Since August 2002, BJ Ostergren has been advocating for states either to shut down their sites which are loaded with SSNs and other personal information or get the SSNs off the records. Many people have listened and made an effort to protect SSNs, but Virginia did not. The legislature of Virginia taking a different road created a law during the 2008 session that said "Do as I say...not as I do" which was directed right at Mrs. Ostergren and this website in an effort to silence her. They didn't like it that she published many records belonging to legislators and others which showed SSNs. She was only doing what they were doing. They said they wanted the records put online, so she put some of theirs on this website.
In a March 15th, 2008 AP article about the new law, Dena Potter wrote, "Even the lawmaker behind the bill acknowledged that stopping people like Ostergren from publishing the Social Security numbers - not protecting Virginians from identity theft - was the goal of the legislation." The patron of the Senate bill was Senator Edd Houck (D) and the patron of the House bill was Del. Joe May (R). During the House floor debate, Del. Joe May stood up and said "there is a woman putting SSNs on a website" and said it must be stopped. He didn't say that the Circuit Court Clerks are doing the same thing. Both bills passed unanimously and not one person stood up for First Amendment rights. (More coming on that in the future...)
Instead of the lawmakers dealing with all the personal info in those records like SSNs, they directed their "venom" at BJ Ostergren and this website and created a law which is at the center of litigation in Federal Court right now: Betty J. Ostergren v. Robert McDonnell, Attorney General of VA - Read the ACLU's press release and then read the Memorandum Opinion rendered by Federal Judge Robert Payne on August 22, 2008.
The solution could have been so simple in how the legislature dealt with SSNs in the public records - just shut down all websites until 100% of the SSNs were removed. But the legislators didn't do that and they also didn't even bother to fund a redaction program in 2007 which would have cost an estimated $8 million dollars and would have required the Clerks to remove all SSNs by July 1, 2010. Read the "fiscal impact" statement linked here in a 2007 bill where it states that the money was not appropriated and so the July1, 2010 date was eliminated (see second paragraph in # 8). Also literally millions of dollars have been spent in VA getting the records available via remote access, but like in Hanover County, VA which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, there are only 13 users of the remote system there making it one expensive system.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
* Read about and email Betty "BJ" Ostergren, Founder/Editor/Publisher of The Virginia Watchdog
* Hot links including this new one..."Patient Privacy Rights" which deals with electronic medical records (a bad idea)
* Here are links to some various Secretary of States' UCC "Search" sites. (UCCs are "financing" statements.)
THIS WEBSITE IS COPYRIGHTED