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Bluegrass Blog Suit Will Move Forward
by Michael Martinez
A federal judge in Kentucky this week denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit accusing the Republican administration of Gov. Ernie Fletcher of blocking state employees from a Democratic blog for political reasons.
U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell has referred a lawsuit filed by Mark Nickolas, the author of the liberal BluegrassReport blog, to a federal magistrate. Nickolas sued the administration last summer after his blog was targeted by a Web filtering initiative designed to improve the efficiency of state employees.
Fletcher aides said the blog was among a trove of sites that was blocked by a content-neutral filtering program. Nickolas, who managed the failed 2003 gubernatorial campaign of now-Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Ky., said he was censored and that his site was blocked the week after he was quoted in a front-page story in The New York Times about Fletcher being indicted in a hiring scandal.
"So much for all the predictions by Fletcher-loyalists that the case would be dismissed," Nickolas wrote on his blog this week.
Mark Inman, the state's technology commissioner at the time the filtering initiative was implemented, told the Herald Leader last month that officials in Fletcher's administration bragged to him about specifically blocking BluegrassReport. Inman, who was fired last year and replaced by Mark Rutledge, also told the newspaper that he heard cabinet members discuss how they spied on the e-mail accounts of certain employees to determine their loyalty to the administration.
A cabinet spokeswoman told Technology Daily last week that Inman was a "disgruntled former employee" and that his "recollection of events" was inaccurate. She declined to comment on Nickolas' lawsuit because it is still pending in court.
Nickolas, who maintains that he never has had any contact or discussions with Inman about the matter, said the administration's argument is disingenuous and that Inman's story is a "blockbuster" development in the case.
In other news, The Denver Post reported Thursday that a Republican blogger in Colorado was deflecting accusations this week that he conspired with lawmakers to attack a Democrat who recently criticized supporters of the state's charter school system.
Brad Jones, a political consultant who posted e-mails in which state Rep. Michael Merrifield blasted charter school supporters, is beating back accusations that he conspired with Republican state senators to smear Merrifield. Some Democrats said they have become suspicious of Jones' connections to a Web site for state Senate Republicans.
Republican Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany also denied any connection to Jones or the open-records request Jones made to obtain Merrifield's e-mail.
"Any accusation that there is some massive amount of coordination between that and any other project I have really isn't accurate," Jones said.
Data Exposed On Public Web Site In Massachusetts
Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin sharply criticized Gov. Deval Patrick last week for failing to protect the personal information of visitors to his new grassroots Web site, but it turns out that sensitive data on tens out of thousands of citizens also is available on Galvin's site.
AP reported Thursday that Galvin's site provides public access to Uniform Commercial Code filings, which include Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, home addresses, and phone numbers. He said the data, which is used primarily by money lenders, is necessary for commerce and that he does not plan to take it down from the site.
"There are people who are reliant upon this system." Galvin said.
Betty Ostergren, a Virginia-based privacy activist who has requested that Galvin shut down access to that portion of his site, said she was dissatisfied with his response.
"It's totally unacceptable that they are contemplating leaving it up," she told AP. "Once they realize it's a veritable treasure trove, identity thieves will flock to it. They need to shut the links down."
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen last month closed off the section of her Web site where Uniform Commercial Code filings were located. She said that type of data should not be publicly available on the Internet until the state can find a way to protect it electronically. She has advocated a bill that would limit the amount of Social Security numbers that can be made available in public records.
Idaho Supreme Court Examines Public Records Case
The highest court in Idaho is examining whether hundreds of e-mails sent between public employees are exempt from the state's open records law.
The Idaho Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in a case involving a lawsuit filed by The Spokesman-Review newspaper to obtain e-mails exchanged between Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas and Marina Kalani, the former supervisor of the county's juvenile drug court. The newspaper is seeking the e-mails as part of an investigation into Kalani's former workplace.
State District Court Judge John Stegner sided with the newspaper in a 2005 ruling that has been appealed by Kalani, who believes the e-mails should be kept private. AP reported that Kalani's attorney, Gregory Horne, said that the e-mails should not be made public because they are personal in nature. He said disclosure of the e-mails would violate Kalani's constitutional rights to privacy even though they were sent on public computers while she was at work.
Florida Top Cop Busts Web-Based Pyramid Scheme
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum announced this week that consumers in his state will receive $1.6 million in restitution as the result of a judgment he has obtained against a Web-based pyramid scheme.
McCollum said the judgment resolved a civil lawsuit the state filed against Professional Resource Systems International, which was accused of running pyramid scheme involving Internet home businesses.
The state launched an investigation into PRSI in 1999 after receiving numerous consumer complaints. The probe led to convictions against eight individuals linked to the scheme. McCollum's office said it is in the process of notifying about 45,000 customers that restitution will be disbursed to fraud victims.
"It is essential that businesses understand we will not tolerate business practices that defraud the citizens of our state," McCollum said, in a statement.
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