AOL accused of privacy violation
The online service may have violated its own policy and perhaps the law when it allegedly revealed the identity of a member to a Navy investigator.
But the sailor, Timothy McVeigh of Hawaii (no relation to the Timothy
Timothy R. McVeigh |
The Navy linked the profile to McVeigh, a 17-year veteran of the submarine force who held the rank of senior chief, after the military investigator called AOL and said he wanted to find out the identity of the person who had sent him a fax belonging to the screen name. Without identifying himself, he said an employee named "Owen" revealed the name of the account owner as McVeigh along with his state of residence, according to transcripts of sworn military testimony provided by McVeigh's advocates.
AOL spokeswoman Wendy Goldberg said AOL does not release the identity of a user unless it is "presented with a search warrant, a court order, or subpoena. Federal law prohibits release of any personal information. We take this in our members' policy very seriously.
"Our policies are all well-known by all our representatives and we believe our policies are followed by them," she added. "There is nothing in the transcript to suggest we gave out private information."
However, some who have read the transcript think otherwise.
"AOL appears to have violated its much-touted privacy policy and destroyed a subscriber's life," said David Sobel, an attorney with the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Every AOL subscriber needs to be concerned about this incident."
Deirdre Mulligan, a staff attorney with the Center for Democracy and Technology, said that when the Navy investigator called AOL seeking to connect the screen name with McVeigh, it also violated a federal law: the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which requires that a government agency seeking information about an individual's online communication or subscriber information must go through an "appropriate legal process in which, at the very least, they seek an administrative subpoena."
That may not matter when it comes to the question of the law, she said.
But those involved in the case are far from comforted.
"Legally speaking, there was no proof that this was his email account," said John Aravosis, an Internet consultant helping to bring attention to the case. "This was his email account. They called AOL and AOL gave the absolute proof that this was his email account. That should never happen."
"It is doubtful to me that a court would have issued a subpoena under these circumstances," he said.
McVeigh, 36, was serving as chief of the boat on the USS Chicago, the head enlisted person on a submarine, when in September he returned from a brief tour out at sea to be confronted with allegations that he had declared his homosexuality and was under suspicion of sodomy and indecent acts based solely on the AOL user profile, said McVeigh, who developed a Web page to publicize his plight.