Put your MONEY where your MOUTH is Jeannemarie

Here is a little tidbit about how Devolites- Davis reacted when the shoe was on the other foot that puts her recent campaign mailer disclosing personal information about Chap Petersen, his home, and children into perspective:

A few years ago, a woman named B.J. Ostergren had a bad experience with personal information being released through Court records.

BJ looked into it, and was shocked to find out that the Commonwealth of Virginia was discloing private citizen's social security numbers to the public through court records, and through the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

Even worse, BJ found out that for $25 a month, our Court clerks were granting anyone who paid
for on-line access to land records that contained SSNs. Large "data brokers" like Choice Point and Lexis-Nexis would pay this nominal fee and then grab as many records as they could download as fast as they could, and then compile the information and resell it to law firms, corporations, private investigators, and - at that time - any one else willing to pay big $ for the information.

Fairfax County's own hopefully soon to be outgoing court clerk -- John T. Frey -- was the worst, but by no means the only offender.

At the same time, Virginia was closing off access to this same personal information by restricting public access to it in voter records, and taking it off the face of drivers licenses. The Federal Trade Commission had launched a campaign urging people to carefully guard this information, and avoid any unnecessary disclosure. The Commonwealth had recognized that the social security number is the key to a vast number of public and private databases: by getting access to it, you can unlock this information, and amass data on anyone: you can find people who do not want to be found and snoop into their medical, financial and educational records. With this number, you can not only spy on people and harass folks who you don't like, but swipe their identities, and with their identities, steal their money.

BJ understood that it did not make sense to close off some records containing such information and leave the rest open to anyone. Exposing Virginia citizens to snooping, theft, harassment and exploitation was a very bad idea, and so she went down to Richmond to try to get the problem fixed: to stop Virginia from marketing its citizens' personal information, to place restrictions on the use of the number in Court records; and to change the Virginia Freedom of Information Act so that the Commonwealth could withhold this piece of data from public disclosure.

She ran headlong into Jeannemarie Devolites Davis: Long in the pocket of the information industry, and the BIG BUSINESSES that use this kind of public information, Jeannemarie and her allies made sure that nothing would happen that would restrict the big businesses the freedom to troll through any piece of data about you and me they choose.

With people like Jeannemarie in her way, BJ and her concerns were getting nowhere. Jeannemarie would not give her the time of day.

So BJ got fed up, and did an outrageous thing: she paid the nominal fee and got herself a subscription to the Court records, and posted legislators and public figures records, social security number and all, on her own website.

Jeannemarie's SSN is up there near the top of the list.

BJ thought that maybe if these legislators had their personal information out there in a big way, they might listen a bit more carefully.

Bold, but not a very nice thing to do, BJ.

But now BJ had a lot of people's attention.

One of them was Jeannemarie.

And what did Jeannemarie do about it?

Did she wake up and smell the coffee?

Did she decide to protect the public now that she had had a dose of her own medicine?

Jeannemarie put in a bill.

The bill says great and noble things like:

"An individual's privacy is directly affected by the extensive  . . . dissemination of personal information;?

"An individual's opportunities to secure employment, insurance, credit, and his right to due process, and other legal protections are endangered by the misuse of certain of these personal information systems; and"

"In order to preserve the rights guaranteed a citizen in a free society, legislation is necessary to establish procedures to govern information systems containing records on individuals."

But amid the legislation's pious and worthy words about informational privacy, the main thing the bill would have done was to prohibit BJ from:

"Intentionally communicat[ing] or otherwise mak[ing] available to the general public another individual's social security number regardless of whether the social security number was obtained from a public record or from a private source."

So if BJ continued to put Jeannemarie's Social Security Number on her website, she could be fined $1000 a day, and have to pay Jean-Marie's attorneys fees for their trouble.

Pretty harsh medicine, huh? That's what you get for messing with the POWER, BJ.

But what about all of Jeannemarie's nice friends in the information broker industry? Wacky Court Clerks who hand out the keys to identity thieves? Snoops and spies who troll through private data using FOIA requests and public records?

The bill would not stop any of them from doing anything: it contained exemptions to make sure that Choice-Point, Lexis, Frey and the identity thieves could continue to jeopardize the public and conduct their highly profitable business as usual.

In short, Jeannemarie -- all high and mighty -- was happy to specifically target somebody who was doing something with HER personal information that she disapproved of, while letting the rest our personal information remain exposed for the profit of her BIG BUSINESS allies, and leaving the rest of us to twist in the wind.

One year later, now Jeannemarie is the one who is directly "disseminating personal information" about Chap Petersen's children for her own electoral purposes, endangering Chap's children through "the misuse of personal information systems," and depriving Chap's children of the "rights guaranteed to citizens of a free society."

Jeannemarie, this is just what you would have fined BJ for doing to you.

So how about putting your money where your mouth is Jean-Marie?

How about ponying up $1000 a day from now until election-day to Chap's wife and to each of Chap's kids for this stunt?

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