FWD: The Killer and the New Media

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

Liability for searching?

Liam Youens couldn't find his ex-girlfriend's social security number on
the 
web, so he paid an information broker, Docusearch, $45 to dig it 
up.  Docusearch dug it up; Youens used it to find her current place of 
work; then he drove there and killed her.  The woman's family is suing 
Docusearch for wrongful death, a tort.  Docusearch admits that it used 
"pretexting" (i.e. lying over the telephone) to get the social security 
number.  But it argues that it cannot be liable for locating "generally 
public information" or for pretexting, which is routinely used by police 
and private detectives.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/173387.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59329-2002Jan3.html
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/05/09/text/p3s1.html
http://www.crimetime.com/stalker.htm

* Postscript.  If Youens could have found the social security number on 
Google, could Google be sued for wrongful death?  As search engines get 
ever more probing and comprehensive, will they be liable for disclosing 
information to stalkers or terrorists?  If we recognize that some 
information is not hidden by inaccessibility but only by a high degree
of 
difficulty, then will we be able to maintain a firm distinction between 
lawful searching and unlawful invasions of privacy, trade secrets, or 
military intelligence?  As the arms race between information hiders and 
information seekers escalates, when will obtaining obtainable
information 
be protected by law and when could it be construed as a tort or crime?

[...]

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Peter Suber
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Copyright (c) 2002, Peter Suber
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/copyrite.htm



Kurt-Werner Pörtner
 
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