who is watching the watchers of the watchers?

March 11, 2004 8:55 AM

Docusearch settles claim for 75K with family whose daughter was killed by a stalker who purchased her personal information from them -- a killer whose intentions were described on a Googleable website. The NH Supreme Court determined last year that Docusearch, the company who sold Amy Boyer's work address and SSN to her killer could be held liable for her death, even though some of that information was publicly available. An "Amy Boyer's Law" intended to increase privacy by restricting the display, sale or use of SSNs received negative reviews by privacy organizations and ultimately was removed from an appropriations bill. In a statement, Amy's parents encourage others to use the Internet to keep track of who may be keeping track of their kids. "If only we had typed our daughter's name into any search engine, the Amy Boyer Web site that was posted by her killer would have come up, and we could have called the police...This may never have happened."
posted by jessamyn (6 comments total)

I sense a profitable software app or service around here somewhere.......

I have a nose for these things, BTW - like predicting, back in '98 or '99 the use of GPS (or the like) to track children and pets.
posted by troutfishing at 11:26 AM on March 11, 2004

But of course.
posted by dhartung at 4:09 PM on March 11, 2004

A mirror of the sicko's Amy Boyer website
posted by Slagman at 6:47 PM on March 11, 2004

I just read through his entire site. I feel dirty now.
posted by kimtoxication at 1:26 AM on March 12, 2004

This may never have happened

Might never have happened, dammit!

Oh, and stalking and killing people is wrong.
posted by languagehat at 8:19 AM on March 12, 2004

Wow...I hadn't heard about this, very scary. And to think that this was out there for more than two years and nobody saw it or did anything about it if they did. And nobody cared about what a mess this kid was until he actually killed Amy. Horrifying, even more so because it was preventable. Good post jessamyn
posted by biscotti at 8:30 AM on March 12, 2004