Quite some time ago we bought a copy of the official, publishedlist of all the employees of thePennsylvania prisons and the Parole Board. We wanted torepublish it so that you taxpayers could see (A) how very manyof these drones you employ and (B) how much of your tax moneythey gobble up. Almost at once it became obvious to us that it would beimpossible for us to republish the mammoth list. There was justno way we could rekey over 20,000 records listing each employee.Even if we could, there was no way that we'd ever be able to keepit current. If we tried scanning the hardcopies of the recordsas a series of images, there would be something like a thousandlarge high-resolution images. That would consume so much memorythat nobody could access it and we couldn't afford to post it.What's more, the images wouldn't be searchable and so would havelittle value. We realized that our ambition was frustrated. The onlyreasonable option was to try to get the state to publish the listonline as they publish a list of all the prisoners. Alternately,we thought that we might be able to buy an electronic list whichcould be converted into a database, but that seemed like a remoteand costly alternative. While we were sulking over our failure to demonstrate thehuge burden that guards are to the public, the guards sued is!
Guards are bullies, but you already know that. They are alsotoo stupid to realize that republication of the list wasimpossible. Being stupid thugs, they elected to use the courtsto bully us. A few guards and parole offices along with the union thatthen represented them, AFSCME, brought a suit to abridgeour Constitutional rights of free speech and free press. Violatingthe Constitution is something guards do alot. The guards found a gang of lawyers who were happy to takethe case. Where a lawyer compares money to the Constitution,guess what wins out. They hired an outfit out of Philadelphia, Willig, Williams and Davidson. We have our opinions aboutthis firm, (does phlegm strike a cord?) but will let it up toyou to decide what kind of bullies would help prison guards crushfree speech and your right to know. The guards pretended that they wereafraid. They claimed that their "privacy" would be invadedif we republished the list which has been available for the askingin the Pennsylvania State Library for over 80 years. They feltso guilty about the things that they've done to prisoners thatthey wanted to keep secret such things are their addresses. That was no problem, we didn't have their addresses, didn'twant their addresses and the published list only gave the nameof the county in which they vote. But the facts came out. These parasites were also afraidto let you know how much of our tax money they take. A judge (of the wrong court) enjoined us from republishingthe already public list. That didn't mean anything to us. Wecouldn't republish it anyhow. The only irksome thing was thatthe bullies had found a judge who was willing to ignore the lawand precedents against prior restrain of publication to kiss upto a union with a lot of votes. Of course, judges are justpoliticians and this one's idea of the law was utterly unrealistic. We published an article trying toexplain to the judge, a woman totally out of touch withtechnology how the Internet is different from a local newspaper. Dah!
Of course nothing about any of these prison guardsis "private." We couldn't possibly invade what they don't have.All kinds of information about them (and about you or JohnR. Bielski, Esq. or Amy L. Rosenberger, Esq. theguards' lawyers) is already easily accessible online. Invasionof privacy, my foot! The guards and their agents are simplybullies. So, for the moment, at least, we can't republish the employeeslist and you are deprived of knowing how much they cost you.What you can do, if you wish, is find out all about any guardyou like. Go to any of the MANY background search sites thatare onLine. Here are a few that we've tried:
We tried out these sources on a guard we chose more or lessat random although, admittedly he's a twit not deserving of muchnotice; D. Cress age about 46. We used this scrap ofinformation and the fact that he's employed at State CorrectionalInstitution at Frackville which is in Schuylkill County,Pennsylvania. Presto! there's everything you want to know, name, address,etc., etc. This guy's a nobody and his life is an open book.He's got damn little "privacy." If, for any reason, you want to know anything about a guardor any employee of the Department of Corrections or Parole Board(or a crooked lawyer, for that matter), just click and search.You'll be amazed what's out there. You are welcome to use or republishany of our material.
|