"Ostergren's Law " Heads To Federal Court

The Virginia Law that was crafted to prevent Privacy advocate B.J. Ostergren from pointing out the gaping security hole in Virginia's public (i.e. government) websites is now moving to federal court.

Ostergren's lawyers filed a lawsuit to stop the new law before it goes into effect 7/1/2008. The new law will prohibit the dissemination of any SSNs posted on public websites. Ostergren's lawyers claim that if the government disseminates the information in a public forum, they cannot stop it's re-publication by citizens under the First Amendment.

Keep in mind, the SSN's are posted on public websites (usually tax websites, or court websites), because the state is too lazy to redact them. Ostergren is trying to force the state to either redact them or remove them from the web. Instead, in their infinite wisdom, the Virginia Legislature passed a law (now at issue) making it illegal to re-post the SSNs on another website which is what Ostergren had been doing to bring attention to this huge problem.

So rather than fix the problem, the legislature passed a law saying no one can talk about the problem. Brilliant.

Of course, as Virginia law is irrelevant outside the United States, the Russian mafia is still free to pull your SSN from a Virginia website (oh yes, the 'tubes' run all the way to Russia) and engage in massive identity theft. But the Virginia Legislature thinks if we all cover our eyes, nothing bad will happen. And you Virginia residents pay this think tank's salary. Now get back to work.