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AOL says Navy duped it to get subscriber data
Reuters Story - January 21, 1998 20:10
%BUS %ENT %US %WASH %NEWS %POL %MIL AOL V%REUTER P%RTR
(updates with court hearing, grafs 8-11)
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Internet service provider
America Online accused the U.S. Navy on Wednesday of
duping it into disclosing data on a subscriber now at the
center of a wide-reaching privacy lawsuit.
In a statement, AOL said the Navy "deliberately ignored
both federal law and well-established procedures for handling
government inquiries" and used trickery instead in the case of
Senior Petty Office Timothy McVeigh.
McVeigh, 36, is suing the Navy and the Defense Department
for allegedly unlawfully obtaining confidential subscriber data
without a court order. He is not related to the convicted
Oklahoma City bomber of the same name.
On Jan. 5, the Navy ordered McVeigh's discharge for
allegedly violating the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which
bars U.S. military personnel from declaring themselves to be
homosexual.
Although McVeigh never publicly discussed his sexual
orientation, he had listed himself as "gay" in the marital
status section of an AOL online user profile.
Summing up an internal investigation, AOL said a Navy
investigator fooled a customer service representative by posing
as "a friend or acquaintance" of McVeigh to confirm information
the Navy had gathered elsewhere.
"Our member services representative did confirm information
presented to him by the Navy," AOL conceded. "This clearly
should not have happened and we regret it."
The Navy had no immediate comment. At a U.S. District Court
hearing in Washington, government lawyers agreed Wednesday to
delay the planned discharge of McVeigh until at least Friday.
The voluntary delay was to give Judge Stanley Sporkin time
to rule on McVeigh's emergency injunction motions seeking to
prevent his discharge, his attorney, Christopher Wolf, said.
Last week, the Navy had agreed to put off the discharge,
initially scheduled for last Friday, until at least Wednesday.
McVeigh has charged that the Navy investigator, Joseph
Kaiser, and his supervisor, Lt. Karen Morean, breached his
rights under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
The law bars Internet service providers from knowingly
releasing confidential information gathered online to law
enforcement officers without a court order.
McVeigh's lawsuit was the first to challenge government
access to sensitive information maintained by an online
service, according to the Electronic Privacy Information
Center, a Washington-based group that monitors civil liberties
issues on the Internet.
In its statement, AOL said it was "instituting additional
measures" to "reinforce our privacy policies and procedures" to
employees who handle its more than 1 million subscribers calls
a week.
The Dulles, Virginia-based company, which claims to be the
world's largest Internet online service, announced on Tuesday
that it had expanded its reach to 11 million subscribers
worldwide. |
