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Are Cops Gathering Info On Misconduct Victims?

By David Packman

Some of our readers may remember when, early this year, some Seattle police officers created a fake Injustice In Seattle site to fool people searching for this site into revealing their personal information to Seattle police officers instead.

The site is simple really, it merely consists of a form that prompts visitors to provide their personal information along with details about whatever complaint they might have against the Seattle Police Department. Where that information ends up, however, and what is done with it is still unknown.

Well, that site is still up and apparently still gathering information on people searching for this site, some of which may very well be victims of police misconduct trying to find information about what they can do, as many of those who write me privately often do.

This means, of course, that the fraudulent site poses the potential risk of further abuse as there's no way for us to determine what those officers are doing with the information they've been gathering. As far as we know, they may use it to prepare for potential lawsuits or they could even use that information to harass witnesses or victims of police misconduct into keeping silent about what they suffered. In other words, there's nothing to prevent them from using the information they've gathered with that fake site to further abuse people that they have already mistreated.

Thankfully, most of the major search engines have ignored the fraudulent site, which reduces the potential threat of misuse, but there is one standout that still lists it, and they list it above our site...


Now, why MSN lists that site ahead of this one isn't clear, especially when that site is static and likely doesn't have the same number of visitors we do. However, it wasn't until recently that MSN even listed our site in their searches even though I registered it there before the fraudulent site was created. But it's clear that people using MSN to find this site may be ending up unwittingly sharing their personal information with unknown officers.

Ultimately, I don't think there's anything I can do to prevent this from continuing. I can only provide warnings about that site to our visitors and hope that potential victims of police misconduct haven't been giving their information to those who may potentially be the very same officers who abused them.

While I'm still hoping that MSN eventually removes that listing from their search results... my complaints haven't been enough to convince them to do so up to this point. So there's little else that I can do at this time.

Be careful out there people.

Full post as published by Injustice in Seattle on December 04, 2008 (boomark / email).