Warning the public about potential sex offenders in their midst is one thing. To a group of former offenders and their families in Oregon, warnings on a public Web site go too far. They've filed suit to keep their criminal records private.
The Oregon State Police is scheduled to launch a Web site later this month listing the names, addresses, and photos of all registered sex offenders. But the site's launch was delayed Wednesday as a group of sex offenders moved to block it.
In a motion filed Tuesday, Oregon attorneys for four anonymous plaintiffs asked a Marion County Circuit Court to grant a temporary restraining order to prevent the launch.
According to the complaint, "John Doe No. 8 reasonably fears and believes that if his name, photograph, and identity is broadcast over the Internet as a sex offender, he will immediately and readily lose his employment."
Ten Oregon offenders and their wives, all using the pseudonyms John and Jane Doe, were listed as plaintiffs in the suit.
Polly Nelson, southern district coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, said the case is apparently the first to target Internet access to sex offender information.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs could not be reached for comment.
The suit said Internet publication of the information without an established need for public safety "imposes cruel and unusual punishment" and violates Constitutional rights regarding privacy, double punishment, and due process, among others.
Oregon authorities have agreed to delay the site's launch until the court rules on the suit.
State police spokesman Lieutenant Greg Hastings said providing information on the state's 8,500 registered sex offenders benefits the public.
"We would receive many phone calls every day from the public to find out if offenders lived next door -- or if coaches of youth athletic teams have been registered sex offenders," Hastings said. "We believe the public would like to know this information."
He noted that Michigan has had its registry online since 1997 and its site gets millions of hits. "There is an impact on [state] employees to field that many calls. So the Internet is very useful tool."
Oregon and many other states have long required sex offenders to register with state police. The Oregon Legislature passed a new law, which took effect Tuesday, officially allowing police to electronically publish the state's sex offender registry.
The law, which freed the Oregon State Police to dump its data onto the Net, followed similar efforts by states including Alaska, Delaware, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Public disclosure policies stem from the federal "Megan's Law," named for Megan Kanka, the 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was raped and killed in 1994 by a repeat sex offender living across the street.
Passed as part of the 1994 Crime Bill, the law requires states to enact regulations requiring violent sex offenders to register with law enforcement agencies. Local officials are permitted to alert communities if a registered sex offender is living in the neighborhood. It is up to state lawmakers to decide how to release the information and, specifically, whether to put it online.
"We generally oppose these kinds of programs," said the ACLU's Nelson. "Besides victimizing the victims again and possible vigilantism is the possibility of a false sense of security." Many victims are abused by a relative, she says, so those sex offenses often go unreported.
The lawsuit filed this week contained a laundry list of the plaintiffs' fears, including loss of employment, public revenge, and fear for the physical safety of the offenders and their loved ones, pets, and personal property.
The complaint argued that offenders had completed treatment, as required by their sentences, and said they had not re-offended since conviction. It asked the court to declare Internet publication of their information unconstitutional.
Karen Coyle, Western regional director of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, agreed the issue was problematic. For example, accidentally publishing the name of a non-sex offender could be catastrophic for an individual, she said.
"The odds of looking up this public Web site and mistaking someone's identity is fairly plausible. People using this information in a prejudicial way against someone who isn't related to their defense is also quite plausible," Coyle said.
More importantly, she said the case highlights the nature of "public" information in the Internet age.
"Public on the Internet is very different from the kind of public that we mean in the sense of having to go down to a county courthouse and look someone up," Coyle said. "The definition of public changes when you can get this information just at the touch of a button from anywhere in the world."
Hastings, of the Oregon State Police, acknowledged that the Internet adds a new dimension to the release of criminal information. But, he said, "the Internet has many positives associated with it as well as some negatives. And we think the positives outweigh the negatives in this situation."
As to the possibility of vigilante action against sex offenders, Hastings said news releases by his department stress that any attempts at harassment or harm of the offenders will not be tolerated.
"It's not being made available in order to allow people to go out and create harm, annoyance, or create inconvenience for these people."
David Leith, assistant attorney general at the Oregon Justice Department said his office was still formulating its response to the lawsuit, but doesn't think that the release via the Internet "qualitatively changes" the release of sex offender information.
