Authorities fear dangers of online ‘rat’ database

Authorities have issues
Authorities disagree. In documents filed in Bucci’s court case last month, federal prosecutors said they have information that Bucci set up the Web site to help intimidate and harm witnesses.

“Such information not only compromises pending or future government investigations, but places informants and undercover agents in potentially grave danger,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter K. Levitt wrote.

While prosecutors haven’t pointed to a case where a witness or officer was harmed because of the Web site, it has been used to shatter an undercover agent’s anonymity. After Hawaiian doctor Kachun Yeung was charged with distributing narcotic painkillers this spring, a surveillance picture of an undercover Drug Enforcement Agent was posted on the site.

Federal prosecutors said they traced the posting to the University of Hawaii newspaper’s photo department, where the doctor’s son was a photo editor. The posting identified the names of three agents and described one as “a known liar and a dirty agent. He is an absolute disgrace to the American justice system.”

Prosecutors in Boston have discussed whether WhosaRat is protected as free speech but have not moved to shut it down. In 2004, an Alabama federal judge ruled that a defendant had the right to run a Web site that included witness information in the form of “wanted” posters.

Judges urge caution
Earlier this month, federal judges from Minnesota and Utah urged their colleagues to be careful about how much information about witnesses is released in public files, noting that they could end up on WhosaRat.

Steve Bunnell, chief of the criminal division at the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, said the rules of evidence already require authorities to identity witnesses to the people most likely to harm them: the defendants. Most of the documents labeled “top secret” on the site are really public court records or information copied from other Web sites, he said.

His concern is that the site disparages the reputation of people who come forward to help solve crimes.

“We don’t make those high-level gang and drug organization cases without somebody on the inside telling us what’s going on,” Bunnell said.

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