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Secretary of state candidate at center of storm over ID thefts
Despite warnings, lawsuits, GOP's Hartmann kept info on court Web site.
The Dayton Daily News
October 15, 2006
By Laura A. Bischoff
Republican Greg Hartmann says his opponent is lax on identity theft, but as Hamilton County clerk of courts, Hartmann left thousands of sensitive documents on his Web site for years despite complaints that the practice could subject people to ID theft. Hartmann is running against Democrat Jennifer Brunner for Ohio secretary of state, an office that oversees millions of public records as well as Ohio's elections. "My experience fighting identity theft as Hamilton County clerk of courts makes me uniquely qualified to advocate on this issue," Hartmann said in a July press release. He boasted he "proactively protected private information by suspending public access to documents via the Web site until all sensitive material can be removed." Still, it's a step he took three years after entering office, a time in which he was prodded by citizens and sued over the records. "I thought it was an issue we needed to address — Social Security numbers on our Web site — but this was not a no brainer," Hartmann said recently. "When you start messing around with a public record it can be a problem legally." When Hartmann became court clerk in February 2003, the office Web site was already posting all the court records – traffic tickets, divorce cases, civil and criminal cases and more. The site got 400,000 hits a month, including visits from identity thieves. It also garnered national attention in a September 2002 New York Times article about its pitfalls. Shortly after Hartmann became clerk job, at least four people e-mailed his office with concerns that online documents could put people at risk for identity theft. Hartmann, a former criminal prosecutor, kept the documents online, and 10 months later appointed a task force to study the issue. He said others were weighing in on the matter and he wanted to involve attorneys and the courts in deciding how to handle it. By fall 2004, the Blue Ash Police Department in suburban Cincinnati told Hartmann that several suspects had told police how easily they were able to "steal" public information from the clerk's Web site to create new identities. One man knew of arrest warrants for him so he went to Hartmann's site, looked up someone's traffic ticket and made a new fake ID, Blue Ash Police Sgt. Joe Boyatt wrote to Hartmann. The man used the false ID to steal a car off a dealer's lot and withdraw $8,500 from another person's bank account before being arrested in Florida, Boyatt said. Blue Ash cops told Hartmann how during a routine traffic stop they stumbled upon an identity theft ring that led back to the clerk's Web site. Boyatt said recently 141 identities had been stolen by that ring. In December 2004, Cynthia Lambert, a pharmacist, filed a federal lawsuit against Hartmann and the county, saying someone stole her identity based on a traffic ticket Hartmann's office posted online in September 2004. The day after the lawsuit was filed, Hartmann removed 320,000 traffic tickets from the Web site. He maintains it was his task force recommendations, not Lambert's lawsuit, that prompted the action. Over the next year and a half, he took down various sets of documents as it became apparent sensitive information was still being posted. In April 2005, he restricted online access to domestic relations documents, then in October, removed warrants, evictions and other records. This June, Hartmann removed all 25 million documents from the public Web site, calling it "proactive measure." Lambert's attorney Chris Jenkins doesn't buy it. He said Hartmann was well aware of the problems for two years, but he did nothing until he was sued — a charge Hartmann denies. "Why won't he take responsibility?" said Jenkins, who said he doesn't think Hartmann is ready to oversee state documents and elections. "That's really my question. It's undisputable now that hundreds of people have actually had their identity stolen because he operated this Web site," he said. Even in hindsight, Hartmann said, he would not have handled things differently. "This is a challenging issue. You know what, I could have just pulled the whole Web site down three years ago and not provided any access, but I didn't think that was the right thing to do. I'm on the front edge of this issue in Ohio. I've tried to balance public access with the need to protect privacy," he said. Contact this reporter at (614) 224-1624 or lbischoff@DaytonDailyNews.com.
