Email Records Posted by Arkansas Man
According to Computerworld, an irate Arkansas man posted information that he found on his PulaskiWatch website. This sensitive information was gleaned from emails from a county clerk and nine other government officials. All of the information was found through public records. Other sensitive information on Virginia officials was also posted by a watchdog group called the Virginia Watchdog. Sadly, the group doesn’t seem to be working well.
The man who posted the information, Bill Phillips, did so because he had a point to prove to county officials. Phillips is the owner of PulaskiWatch and found out that officials had posted circuit court records which showed such information as voided checks, Social Security numbers and even bank account numbers. In retaliation, Phillips searched thousands of office-related emails he found on the Internet and posted what he found. A few of the emails that were acquired by Computerworld contained sensitive information. Two examples of the content are, first, a woman who left their employ because she feared for her safety. A dangerous looking man was loitering in the parking lot. The second example was how much salary to pay two employees who had been recently demoted. In addition, Phillips posted each county employee’s name, salary and the date hired. He appears to be only retaliating on county officials and not posting sensitive information like they did. Information of that nature has already been posted on the Pulaski County site before, and once is more than enough. As a side note, students that work for the elections will make $7.50 an hour. Yes, that was in one of the emails as well.
It’s important to see that although this situation seems to be an invasion of privacy, both the Virginia Watchdog group and Pulaski Watch acquired this information from public records. They didn’t have to go down to the courthouse and slip the judge a few bills under the table or pay off a secretary. They just searched the website of the local government, or Googled someone’s name. Phillips intends to remove all the documentation on his website if Pat O’Brien, the County Clerk removes documents with sensitive information off the county site. That seems fair. He basically told the officials that their private emails will be taken down once the residents of Pulaski County have all their personal information removed. Hopefully there won’t be an increase in identity theft in that area.
This isn’t the first time the county has dealt with the issue of resident privacy. There were real estate records posted that had to have the personal information removed after the fact. O’Brien says he won’t take down the records from the courts, and as far as Social Security numbers go, only the Arkansas Supreme Court can instruct blocking them. O’Brien intends to take down the records, but says the software used to create the real estate records can’t be used on the court records.
That’s a bad, sad commentary on Pulaski County.
