THE VIRGINIA WATCHDOG
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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.
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06/12/09 - "Virginia's computer czar was fired hours after he questioned a multimillion-dollar monthly bill from the giant company that the state is paying $2.3 billion for information technology services." Please read the whole article. That private company holds all our personal information like SSNs. Thank you U.S. Sen. Mark Warner for getting us into this screwed up mess that is costing VA taxpayers billions. :( Also go to more articles in our news archives...
06/09/09 - Roanoke Times' editorial: "Now safeguard the information..."
06/04/09 -1) Richmond Times-Dispatch's Michael Paul Williams says "State must stop fighting privacy activist" 2) Remember the hacking of the records held by the State's Prescription Monitoring Program. There were SSNs in those records and now the state is sending out over 531,000 letters to people. Too little, too late? Why does the "state" have to know our private medical business anyway? Because of some drug addicts, everybody's info gets sent to the state and then put in a database and put at risk? Seems so... Another idiot law. Go to our archives for more articles.
06/03/09 - ACLU Press release re: Betty Ostergren v. Robert McDonnell, in his official capacity as Attorney General
BREAKING NEWS - 06/02/09 6:30 PM EDT - We won! Legislators in VA voted to allow citizens' public records on the internet complete with SSNs and other personal information, but when BJ Ostergren published their public records on this site, they got mad and passed a law aimed directly at her and The Virginia Watchdog website. Their intention was to shut her up and take away her First Amendment rights. So one year ago, we brought suit against former Att. Gen. Robert McDonnell. Today Federal Judge Robert Payne rendered this 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.
Also read the previous Memorandum Opinion rendered August 22, 2008. The judge doesn't address out-of-state documents, but the AG has asserted on the record that he will not enforce the statute regarding such records.
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* Read this article which was recently in Computerworld about SSNs and other personal info online that features BJ Ostergren, founder of The Virginia Watchdog.
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* 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.
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* 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.
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* 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.
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* 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.)
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