Washblog

So Dunn wrote a letter to the director of the county Records (and yes, Elections) demanding that this site be taken down out of fear of identity theft.

The director (Dunn's nemesis, Dean Logan) wrote back that these are public records which the county is required to make public, and which are heavily used via the Internet for legitimate purposes. There are 63 million pages available online, many of them decades old. Logan explained that document types which predictably include personal identifiers are not available online. Finally, he noted that there are no known instances of online access of public records being the basis for an act of identity theft.

This apparently hurt Dunn's feelings, so he held a sensationalized press conference to publicize the examples he had found, leading to the aforementioned headlines. He claimed that King County creates risks that other Washington counties do not.

By the next day, some reporters had already exposed the ignorance and misinformation behind Dunn's claims. In fact, it appears that King County is ahead of some others in assisting individuals who have concerns.

The point is not that identity theft isn't a real problem, or that government policies don't have any impact on its potential. It is perfectly llegitimate to challenge existing practices in light of developing trends in cyber crime. What is illegitimate is to exploit people's fears by political grandstanding.

Someone ought to tell young Dunn that he is getting paid $115,000 per year to help RUN King County, not throw rocks at it for political gain or personal vendetta. His job is to use the legislative process to assist and protect the public. Anyone can call a press conference!

They ought to tell him that with a little research he would have learned why this material is available online (both as matters of law and of policy), and perhaps that contrary to his assumption, the county and state have been working on this issue -- the State Legislature in fact increased the counties' authority to keep more documents offline for exactly this purpose.

It would even be nice if someone would tell him that publicizing opportunities for identity theft is, like George W. Bush's infamous "bring it on" boast, arrogant to the point of stupidity.

Unfortunately, his apologists will do just the opposite (see King County Journal editorial, June 28th).

Keep this one on file, folks. The GOP has young Dunn on a fast track. We'll want to remind people what he's capable of.

Tyler Page, Inmate of the 9th County Council District