Site Makes Identity Theft Possible, Lawsuit Says

By Dayton Daily News, Ohio

Mar. 3–COLUMBUS — A Brown County man filed a class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati on Thursday demanding that Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell immediately stop posting on his Web site documents containing Ohioans’ Social Security numbers.

The lawsuit is part of the continuing controversy involving concerns that making the numbers available on the site opens the potential for identity theft.

Darrell Estep of Mount Orab said in his lawsuit that documents containing his Social Security number are among those posted and he believes more than 10,000 people were affected similarly.

Blackwell’s spokesman, James Lee, said the secretary of state doesn’t know how many people are affected and is working with legislative leaders to “find creative ways to balance the need of businesses and banks and individuals” seeking the information on the documents with the interest of protecting “personal public information.”

The documents are financing statements between borrowers and lenders.

The lawsuit said, “the secretary of state, unreasonably and without an justifiable state interest, exposed Mr. Estep to an ongoing risk of identity theft.”

Attorney General Jim Petro, Blackwell’s rival for the GOP nomination for governor, asked Blackwell to notify those whose Social Security numbers were posted, remove from the site files with

those numbers and remove the numbers before re-posting documents.

Lee said Blackwell is not permitted to alter a document filed with his office and it becomes a public record.

By William Hershey and Shaheen Samavati

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