FLORIDA LAWMAKERS DEMANDED TO ACCOUNT FOR LEGISLATIVE MESSES
AND
OKLAHOMA ACCIDENTLY RELEASES THOUSANDS OF SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS POSTING THEM ONLINE
FLORIDA ACLU DEMANDS LONG OVERDUE CHANGES TO BETTER PROTECT CHILDREN
ACLU and Sexual Assault Prevention Groups Urge Gov. Crist to Address Safety and Housing Crises Stemming From Sex Offender Residence Restrictions
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
June 2, 2008
CONTACT:
ACLU of Florida Media Office, (786) 363-2737 or media@aclufl.org
MIAMI – The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida today sent a letter to Governor Charlie Crist urging him to convene a taskforce to address the ongoing safety threat and housing crisis stemming from the patchwork of city and county residence restrictions for persons convicted of sexual offenses. The letter points out that the laws restricting where released sex offenders can live have created new problems for public safety.
The letter is co-signed by sexual assault and domestic violence prevention organizations – including the Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault Council of Greater Miami, the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence, and the Florida Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers.
State law makes it unlawful for persons convicted of certain sexual offenses to reside within 1,000 feet of any school, day care center, park or playground. Local ordinances in Miami-Dade County, the City of Miami, and the City of Miami Beach impose more stringent restrictions of 2,500 feet. The restrictions are so onerous that some individuals have resorted to living under bridges, including a bridge on the Julia Tuttle Causeway, while others have absconded.
"These ordinances were passed by local governments with the goal of keeping communities safer, but they have had the opposite effect,” said Carlene Sawyer, President of the ACLU’s Greater Miami Chapter. “Experience now shows that these local laws have created a class of homeless persons in an unstable and high-risk environment with little possibility of compliance or establishment of lawful lifestyles. It is time to do something different, and intervention by the Governor is essential before the problem worsens.”
The letter charges that the sex offender residency restrictions are ineffective at protecting communities and in fact have the potential to make our communities less safe, while simultaneously impeding the ability of released offenders to effectively re-integrate into society and rehabilitate their lives.
Download the full letter in PDF format at: http://www.aclufl.org/pdfs/ResidenceRestrictions060208.pdf
Download the Miami Herald Article in PDF format at: http://www.aclufl.org/pdfs/Herald042008.pdf
Download an excerpt from the NAESV position at: http://www.aclufl.org/pdfs/NAESVPosition.pdf
Download the Zandenbergen and Hart study at: http://www.aclufl.org/pdfs/ZandbergenandHart2006.pdf
About the ACLU of Florida
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida is freedom's watchdog, working daily in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend individual rights and personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. For additional information, visit our Web site at: www.aclufl.org.
SOURCE: http://www.aclufl.org/news_events/?action=viewRelease&emailAlertID=3585
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Oklahoma Leaks Tens of Thousands of Social Security Numbers, Other Sensitive Data
2008-04-15
by Alex Papadimoulis in Feature Articles
LOOKS LIKE A CASE FOR A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT! (EMPHASIS ADDED)
One of the cardinal rules of computer programming is to never trust your input. This holds especially true when your input comes from users, and even more so when it comes from the anonymous, general public. Apparently, the developers at Oklahoma's Department of Corrections slept through that day in computer science class, and even managed to skip all of Common Sense 101. You see, not only did they trust anonymous user input on their public-facing website, but they blindly executed it and displayed whatever came back.
The result of this negligently bad coding has some rather serious consequences: the names, addresses, and social security numbers of tens of thousands of Oklahoma residents were made available to the general public for a period of at least three years. Up until yesterday, April 13 2008, anyone with a web browser and the knowledge from Chapter One of SQL For Dummies could have easily accessed – and possibly, changed – any data within the DOC's databases. It took me all of a minute to figure out how to download 10,597 records – SSNs and all – from their website:
As the title of that last screenshot indicates, the records were made available through the state's Sexual and Violent Offender Registry. For those unaware, the SVOR is a federally-mandated, publically-available registry designed to protect us from the truly horrendous specimens of humanity by forever branding those convicted of a certain crimes with a big "SO". These registries also protect us from the truly unlucky offenders, such as fornicating teenagers, children who take nude pictures of themselves, and public urinators. But I digress. Not only did Oklahoma make avaiable the SSN of those types of offenders, but that of every type of offender in their system. It was all accessible through an innocent looking link on both the SVOR and Offender search pages: More
