QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES
Means "Who Polices the Police?"

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Sheriff used official records to locate critic

Orange County's sheriff used driver's license records to contact a woman who wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper citicizing his staff's use of Taser stun guns and describing him as fat.

Some say Orange County Sheriff Kevin Beary violated federal privacy law when he had his aides use the records to get the address of Alice Gawronski. He sent her a letter accusing her of slander.

It is illegal to access a driver's license database to obtain personal information, except for clear law-enforcement purposes, under the U.S. Driver's Privacy Protection Act of 1994.

"I recently read your slanderous remarks about the Orange County Sheriff's Office in the Orlando Sentinel," Beary wrote Gawronski on March 23. "It is unfortunate that people ridicule others without arming themselves with the facts before they slander a law enforcement agency or individual."

Click here for the rest.

Not only is this against the law and a rank abuse of police power, but it's also downright creepy in a Ray Liotta kind of way. The thought that the police could track down people who are simply doing their duty as citizens, speaking out on important public issues, sends a chill in the direction of free speech itself. This big-boy sheriff wasn't simply responding to an argument, which he could have easily and more effectively done by sending a letter to the editor himself: he was essentially letting this woman know that he knows where she lives!!! That'd make me think twice about criticizing my large-living, down-home, local constabulary, for sure. Badges, grudges, and guns are not at all a good mix, let me tell you.

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