Personal information disclosure by my local town

[krol]

I don’t disagree with the intent here of the op. Basically it allows me to look up owners of anybody’s car. We used to have to schmooze cops to obtain owner id before. Being able to look up owners names can allow for some person that is pissed at some driver that drives slower than they wish to harass them (or worse).

The problem I have is this that op stated;



Op apparently wants something more than having the situation addressed. He’s welcome to hire an attorney who will do anything (ethical) the op wants as long as op pays him.

Thank you. No really, I don't want more than that. But I feel that it will slip through the cracks if I were to simply ask about it.

 

[cbg]

You do realize that this is not solely your decision, right?

 

[krol]

You do realize that this is not solely your decision, right?

sure, if there is no legal remedy then, of course, it has to be the town's decision. I was more hopeful.

 

[justalayman]

Thank you. No really, I don't want more than that. But I feel that it will slip through the cracks if I were to simply ask about it.

Why not start with the easy route. If not successful, hire a lawyer to chase the issue.

Maybe try asking the ACLU if they would be interested in it. They’ve dealt with privacy issues before. They pick and choose what cases they pursue. The worst you’ll get is a no.

 

[Just Blue]

Why not start with the easy route. If not successful, hire a lawyer to chase the issue.

Maybe try asking the ACLU if they would be interested in it. They’ve dealt with privacy issues before. They pick and choose what cases they pursue. The worst you’ll get is a no.

OP has suffered no harm...Why would the ACLU take it on?

 

[Taxing Matters]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Massachussets

I noticed that the system my local town uses to collect the motor vehicle excise tax allows anybody to lookup the name and the address on file of the vehicle owner. To do it the malicious actor needs as little as the bill year, which can be set to the current year, and the license plate number. I was wondering what legal remedies are available to me to enforce the protection of people's personal information. While this is my main goal, I don't mind getting any compensation for damages the town's negligence may have caused me. The information has been open for almost a year. Though, I don't expect a high award here so just wanted them to fix the system. I don't really believe in simply calling them and prefer to use a more formal approach.

Here is the legality of things. The federal and Massachussetts constitutions do not make your name and address private information. Indeed, they do not epressly protect any information about you. Any such protection would have to be by statute. For most of the history of our country virtually no protection existed to keep information about you private. The thing was that to get the information before the internet age you had to take the trouble to go to some government office and dig around to do the research. Not a lot of people were up for doing that, so it wasn’t a huge problem.

In recent years more attention has been paid to privacy issues and there are a patchwork of federal and state laws that address it. At the federal level there are laws that regulate the privacy of records held by the federal government, by financial institutions and by health insurance companies and healthcare providers. No federal law regulates the privacy of information held by state and local governments with the exception of some regulation of your Social Security Number (SSN). Massachusetts has a state statute known as Fair Information Practices Act that regulates the privacy of records held by STATE government agencies. But the act does not apply to local government agencies. See Spring v. Geriatric Authority of Holyoke, 475 N.E.2d 727, 394 Mass. 274 (1985). This act is essentially the state's version of the federal Privacy Act of 1973. I can find no state statute that addresses the privacy of records held by local agencies. That being the case, I don’t see any basis for a lawsuit against the city. While you need not have suffered damages to sue for an injunction, to get the injunction you must show the court that what the city is doing is improper and poses some real risk of harm to you. I’m not seeing that there is anything on which to base the claim that the city is doing anything improper, i.e. anything prohibited by federal and state laws. I do not practice in MA, however, so you may want to consult a local MA attorney familiar with the state laws governing local governments to see if there is some law or court decision that might form the basis of a successful effort at an injunction.

If, at it appears on my somewhat brief research, that there is nothing that prevents the town from doing this then it becomes a political issue of convincing the town to change its practices.

 

[Taxing Matters]

OP has suffered no harm...Why would the ACLU take it on?

You need to show actual damages suffered to win money damages. But not necessarily to win an injunction. But, as I pointed out earlier, you still have to show that the city is doing something improper and that there is a real risk of harm that may result from it.

 

[quincy]

Forum member Stevef is a lawyer in Massachusetts. Perhaps he will stop by and provide some insight.