
Mugged by a Mug Shot Online - digisth
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/business/mugged-by-a-mug-shot-online.html?pagewanted=1&ref=business
======
kcorbitt
I found out about a month ago that one of these sites had an arrest record for
someone with my same first and last name. As luck would have it he also is the
same race and approximate age as I am. We don't really look alike but there
are plenty of people who might google me based on a resume or something
without knowing what I look like and confuse me with him.

The site was high on the first page of results for my name and it was
extremely frustrating. I'm about to graduate and look for a job and it was
embarrassing to think that that's what potential employers would first see.
And yet there was nothing I could do about it -- heck, the person wasn't even
me.

I'm all for freedom of information and those sites have a perfect right to
exist. However, I'm glad that Google also has recognized that their business
model doesn't serve the majority of its customers and pushed down the results.
After reading the article I checked the results for my name and verified that
the offending site disappeared from the first two pages. It may seem like a
small thing but I honestly feel more comfortable talking to recruiters now
than previously.

~~~
mistercow
A general solution for this kind of problem: get other content above them in
Google. This is not hard; mugshot pages and the like have very little PageRank
mojo. The only reason they're at the top of the results is that there's
nothing else with your name to compete.

All you have to do is make a few interesting things (blog posts, github, etc.)
with your name on them and post them to sites like reddit, and they'll easily
beat any data-combing reputation smear site.

~~~
gaius
According to the article that isn't true, mugshot sites have high Google
scores because people tend to linger on them.

And you are rather missing the point that 99.9% of people don't have
GitHub....

~~~
mistercow
>According to the article that isn't true, mugshot sites have high Google
scores because people tend to linger on them.

I can only speculate about causes, but I also have someone in another state
with my name (even a matching middle initial) on mugshot sites, and the
tiniest other references to me (my wedding registry for example) knocked it
off the top Google results page immediately.

As for 99.9% of people not having a GitHub account: so what? I was giving a
suggestion relevant to a typical HN user, not advice for the general
population. The general advice is to do things _like_ that. The point is that
if a wedding registry on theknot.com (Hell, I'm not even sure I made that
wedding registry; it might have been auto-gen'd from our Amazon registry) can
outsell the undesirable sites on Google, you can easily make ten results
happen that knock it off.

GitHub just happens to be an exceptionally good one for an HNer, since it's
the kind of thing that an employer is likely to actually want to see.

------
leephillips
There seem to be two distinct issues here: the fact that these websites
publish mugshots, and the fact that they solicit payment to remove the
pictures and information.

The first issue is clear, at least to me: this is public information and they
have a right to republish it, like it or not.

On the second issue, I don't understand why this is not extortion. Obviously
this is because my understanding of what constitutes extortion is faulty. Can
any lawyers here explain?

~~~
jrockway
Here's why I don't think it's extortion. Imagine you have a neighbor that
hates bicycles. You agree to stop riding yours if she pays you $100,000. Is
that extortion? Obviously not: you have the right to ride your bicycle
regardless of whether or not your neighbor likes it, and you have the right to
sell your professional services (not riding a bicycle, in this case) to
whomever you like.

(Perhaps she wants to sell it to a like-minded buyer, and you're therefore
devaluing the property. Too fucking bad, right?)

A problem that I could see the mugshot sites running into is that they imply
guilt, when the mugshots were only for arrests. Intentionally misleading
someone seems a lot like libel.

~~~
hso9791
"Not doing something" as a professional service?

~~~
shabble
"We put the Pro in procrastination!"

------
Anechoic
One of the local NPR media shows brought up this issue a while back, in
regards to both mugshots and arrest records, and the embarrassment these
public records can cause to people who were exonerated, or may have been
guilty but turned around their lives. The show clearly came down on the side
of the press to be able to publish public records, but the hosts were
sympathetic to the concerns of people who wound up having their records
published and available on Google for All Time.

I always thought the solution was simple - unlike the printed page, web
articles don't have to be static. The publishers should allow the subjects of
these articles to provide updates to the beat reports (subject to verification
of course) to document the disposition of the arrest. You could imagine an
article might say "June 1, 2003: Jane Doe arrested for drug positions (insert
mugshot/arrest record" followed up "Update Feb 1, 2006: Jane Doe indicated
that the case was dismissed, which was verified by court records. Ms. Doe has
not been arrested since and documents provided by Ms. Doe (and authenticated
by this publication) indicate that she graduated with honors from XX college
and has been successfully employed as a mechanical engineer to positive
reviews."

That may not help with the extortion racket problem with the mugshot sites,
but one would hope that the media outlet websites would rank higher than the
mugshot sites on search engines.

~~~
casperc
The thing I don't understand is why the mugshots are being published in the
first place in the US. Like it or not, the internet is a permanent record so
that mugshot of you at your worst time (but not convicted of anything), will
be out there forever in some capacity if it gets published.

~~~
AJ007
A little common sense trumps all of these other elaborate comments.

Why are mugshots publicized? To intimidate people. It means the police can
coerce someone in to doing something with the threat of an arrest.

The NYTimes seems to be blaming private site owners who have added a little
SEO juice, whereas county and government websites usually are written so
poorly as to barely be crawl-able. The police are the ones publishing these
mugshots online, the other sites are just re-organizing them to be a little
more Google bot friendly.

------
csandreasen
I didn't see mention anywhere in the article regarding why the police releases
the mugshots - I'm told by people working in legal professions that it's
actually a means of ensuring that the police aren't overstepping their bounds
and that people aren't disappearing into jail without a valid conviction in
court. By making all of the information public regarding who they arrested the
police can't deny arresting them later on; by releasing the information about
why he or she was arrested, the public can verify that the police are
arresting people for legitimate reasons. This is useful to the public, but I
think it's implemented in too naive a fashion. It takes sensitive data about
me and broadcasts it out everyone, any one of which could store it
indefinitely and rebroadcast it indefinitely.

You can't just not release the information for the aforementioned reasons. You
can disallow rebroadcasting the information - if I can't release it to others,
then the police could potentially take the information down after a few days,
make you disappear, and then we're back at square one.

I think in this case the danger of misuse by third parties outweighs the
danger of police abuse. Maybe there's a better way of keeping the police force
accountable?

~~~
MichaelGG
First, some counties publish special lists of, for instance, men attempting to
or procuring prostitution services aka "johns". So there's probably a fair
amount of shaming and threat they get from this. Police are known to threaten
arrest because even if they drop all charges just going to jail (especially on
a weekend) can be an unpleasant experience, and there's little blowback for
them.

Second, if the police want to disappear people, they'll just not save that
arrest record. The publishing of a log only is only useful for cases where the
police decide to "disappear" you after they've arrested and processed the
subject. Even then they could release someone, document it, then pick them up
around the corner for "disappearing".

------
lettergram
It seems to me that this is the fault of employers not doing the proper
research. I know if I was in HR or was looking to hire an employee I would
pretty much forgo looking at those sites.

For example, what would this website tell me? Potentially, someone with the
name of the person (same or not the same) applying for a particular position
has had a mug shot. All that tells me is they have been arrested (if it's even
the same person), that does not mean they were convicted, they didn't do some
minor offense, or they did not as in this case "do their time."

The point is an employer should probably look at confirmed data, if the
mugshot is not confirmed, it should really be tossed aside.

~~~
itchitawa
I agree. People need to assess whatever information they find before acting on
it. The more well-known these become, the less influential they should be on
any one individual.

------
spindritf
Please, upgrade the link to the single page one
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/business/mugged-by-a-
mug-s...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/business/mugged-by-a-mug-shot-
online.html?pagewanted=all)

------
Brandon0
Funny story. I went to a conference earlier this year where I met a very
attractive sales rep for a company we were considering working with. She
emailed some information a few weeks later and I was going to see about
connecting via LinkedIn, so I Google'ed her name. First picture that came up
was her mug shot from a DUI. From a professional standpoint I'm sure it haunts
her.

~~~
judk
Confirmation that salesperson drinks heavily doesn't to provide much new
information. The most threatening aspect is probably that the mug shot didn't
have her wearing makeup.

Also, you were being creepy.

~~~
Brandon0
Not creepy, just lazy. Googling is faster than using LinkedIn's search.

But not going to lie, we all Google people's names. Still nothing creepy about
it.

------
itchitawa
Good luck having them removed from the Wayback Machine too!
[http://web.archive.org/liveweb/http://www.florida-
mugshot.co...](http://web.archive.org/liveweb/http://www.florida-
mugshot.com/Counties/Hillsborough-County/Arthur-Murray.1214743.html)

~~~
judk
It is public record. Search rank is what matters, not binary availability.

------
ColinWright
Single page:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/business/mugged-by-a-
mug-s...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/business/mugged-by-a-mug-shot-
online.html?pagewanted=1&ref=business&_r=0&pagewanted=all)

------
error54
Looks like Google is finally doing something about this.
[http://blog.codeguard.com/google-cracks-mughshot-
sites/](http://blog.codeguard.com/google-cracks-mughshot-sites/)

------
nu2ycombinator
Now because of hackernews "Maxwell Birnbaum" record is viewed 90 times in last
one hr.

------
nonchalance
for a long time, the Bill Gates wiki page had a picture of his mugshot as the
primary photo (now it's relegated to the middle of the page)

~~~
bsullivan01
Sure, do what Bill gates did with Microsoft, charity and make north of $100
billion and then others will laugh at a 40+ year old traffic arrest.

Now if you're trying a job and they are another 100 applicants....

~~~
judk
Actually Bill Gates had to do was get a few million dollars from his rich
parents, to put his past behind him.

------
tmsh
I believe having the photos linger after they are no longer relevant or
applicable is libel. Even posting the mugshots originally can be construed as
libelous. IANAL, but I would hope the technology will adapt (ie sites only
publish if the mugshots are 'current' and that is subjective but not too
unclear -- when a record is expunged they cease to be useful v. their damages
as defamation; and sites be able to delete them when they are not current
immediately - even automatically). Otherwise I see no reason why are not
liable. Sue them, justice then legislature will follow in a decade or so..
Seriously though I think that's how it works..

------
geuis
No ones hitting this from what I consider to be the right angle. Let me
digress for a moment.

I was arrested in Miami in November 2003 at the FTAA protest in Miami. Spent a
night in jail, and eventually all charges were dropped. Read this if you want
more info,
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_model](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miami_model).

The point is that in my case, I was arrested and I am proud of that. I'll
grant that "protestor" sounds more admirable than "had drugs on them". But I
think they are similar in some ways.

The first and most obvious similarity is the overly-militarized police force
in the US. This is the essence of the Miami Model, a now 10-year old strategy
of approaching domestic protest movements militaristicly at the local police
level rather than as citizens movements. By applying the same tactics to _all_
law enforcement, we end up with situations of over prosecution for things like
possession of drugs and paraphernalia that continue to haunt people for years.
For what are minor issues (had a joint or some pills on them, throw em in
jail) peoples lives are ruined.

So to the point I want to address is that it doesn't matter, of at least it
shouldn't and it's getting better.

Yes, I expect to be Googled and screened when working at a new job. That
happened so long ago that no reference really pops up in reference to @geuis
(though no doubt it will now) but for me it doesn't matter since it was a
protest/civil rights issue that I freely talk about).

But just how the stigma of smoking weed in the past doesn't really matter for
jobs that matter anymore, the same thing is increasingly true for other
recreational drugs. You did E and acid for a bit? Ok, but what kind of
engineer/sales/etc person are you? If anything, I think exposure to certain
drugs makes people more valuable because you can't help but learn something
from it. I know I did.

My questions would be like, "So I found this and this, can you talk about that
a bit?" This is to determine if they are detrimental addicts (no hire) or just
recreational/past users.

I'll admit that my vision is blindered because I live in SF, lived in the
Miami area, am a liberal, and work in technology. But I count myself as a bell
weather of sorts. If the rest of the US is flagging behind in a modern
mindset, then eventually they will catch up.

Anyway, I guess I'll wrap this up by saying that if someone has a record or
doesn't fit into the ordinary pegs and holes, consider other factors when
people look for work. Who knows what things you might have in your own past
that you were lucky to avoid being arrested for.

~~~
notahacker
It's less about "modern mindsets" and more about simple decision making
heuristics. If you've got a stack of resumes for apparently competent
candidates and 10 seconds of Google-fu turns up blog comments and OS code
commits for most candidates with reasonably distinctive names and
MugshotsOnline for another one, you're probably not going to invite the latter
candidate in to explain their views on occasional recreational drug use.

------
itchitawa
If it really is public information then it's perfectly OK to publish it.
Complain to the politicians if you don't like arrest records being public. If
you're supposed to have a "clean" record then you should just lie to your
employer and say "I wasn't convicted". That's what a cleaned record does
anyway. Mr. Birnbaum would have been telling as much of a lie by not
mentioning his conviction like he'd hoped to.

------
Glyptodon
The thing that's especially repugnant is how the money changers can collude to
do deny access to the financial system based on their arbitrary morals.
Companies that collect payments should not be able to stand in for a court in
determining if the activities of their clients are lawful or allowable.

Though the mugshot stuff is kind of lame, too. Taking care of it might be as
simple as not making the record public unless there's a plea or guilty
verdict.

------
joeevans
Google is under no freedom of information restrictions; it is a business. They
can choose to rank mug shot sites high. They can choose to accept or not
accept AdWords money for mug shot related businesses.

~~~
MichaelGG
They shouldn't be _choosing_ to rank mug shots highly. They should be
following algorithms that return results that people want.

On the second part, sure, they could decide mugshot sites are not eligible for
AdWords, but it's not great to have Google deciding who can make advertising
money. OTOH, they're already doing this so I suppose they could take some sort
of ethical stance here.

~~~
joeevans
I generally agree. It's interesting, though, to think how much they in fact do
probably alter results. I'm sure people "want" things that don't appear on the
first page, because there'd be a general freak out if they did. I think they
probably have more cultural latitude in determining which ads they'll accept
than which results they'll display.

Another option they have is to simply set the cost of mug shot related ad
clicks higher. Since their pricing determinations are somewhat mysterious, it
would be harder to critique them for that. Ultimately, it would probably come
down to an ethical stance for them, because they would just be making less
money as a result of what I would consider to be a more ethical decision. As
it is, they are making money off of a system that appears to be wrecking
careers.

------
Aloha
When I see stuff like this, I feel so very very fortunate to have an extremely
common name. It is extortion however to charge to remove images as far as I'm
concerned.

------
andor
Those revenge porn sites that were just banned in California had the same
business model.

~~~
makomk
More interestingly, the main lawyer fighting against those revenge porn sites
was doing so on behalf of a company with the same business model. Smart tactic
on their part - they got a bunch of free positive advertising in the press
whilst helping to shut down the sites which were most controversial and
therefore most likely endanger their business model.

~~~
judk
One of the sites covered here wasn't even a lawyer, the perp was
impersonating.

------
ivanbrussik
one day, somehow, the bastard behind ripoffreport.com will get the karma ass
fkng that he deserves.

if anyone will burn in hell, it will be him.

------
warmwaffles
Isn't this extortion?

~~~
jpatokal
From the friendly article: "But it can’t be extortion as a matter of law
because republishing something that has already been published is not
extortion.”

------
Erwin
Here's an Evil Idea for a open source equivalent: foss-testing.org. Innocuous
name, but it chains together user identities with checkins they've made that
were 1) style violations 2) turned out to be bugs 3) turned out to be later
security issues.

What do I care whether I have a style violation? Well, it's about using the
dark patterns to make your "user page" (collected from publically available
information so legally proof) sound as bad as possible. Similar to the
consumeraffairs deal where every review is bad. So your prospective employer
searches for "Bob Bobson" and sees a nice, professionally designed page that
claims:

Bob Bobson has trouble following best practices for code styling, which could
indicate a problem with following corporate standards: link to 37 instances of
inconsistent naming/indentation/brace style on github

Bob Bobson has 7 github repositories where he has checked in 90% of the
source. This may indicate a "lone wolf" that does not play well with others

Bob Bobson has 14 open issues in github trackers. This may indicate lack of
following through on a project

Bob Bobson has closed 41 github issues immediately as "wontfix". This may
indicate a technologically orientated user that is insensitive to user and
customer needs

We've analyzed Bob Bobson's commit messages, and assigned it a English
Comprehension Score of 4 (out of 10). This may indicate a communication
problem.

Failing anything else, you can smear Bob Bobson by the projects he associates
with.

Bob Bobson has contributed to TOR. The TOR tool is associated with child
pornographers and drug traffickers.

Bob Bobson has contributed to KDE. The KDE project has 523,123 outstanding
bugs. We're not directly saying it's Bob's fault, but you know...

Of course, you can't start off writing all negative smear about everyone. You
want to start out by being positive, writing cool blogs about how your company
analyzes OSS. Maybe buy some licenses for expensive static analyzers and share
the results. Make some cool pages about Linus' or Guido's checkins. Maybe even
sponsor a few OSS projects or OSS people.

How does this make money? Well, Bob Bobson does not like to be known as a team
player. Would Bob Bobson like to dispel that conclusion based on publically
available data in our proprietary algorithms? Well, as it happens we also sell
a "TeamWork Evaluation Survey", where if you think your team work skills have
improved you under go a comprehensive psychometric test (signed off on by our
team of psychometric specialists) that verifies your team work skills. Of
course, such a test is expensive, but isn't the $199 worth it to be given a
prominent "Team Work: Gold Badge" score? All that other stuff we said about
you being a bad team player will go away.

------
bsullivan01
_> >He added that the sites do, in fact, run afoul of a Google guideline,
though he declined to say which one_

BULLSH*T. Everyone is guilty and Google chooses when to use the hammer for
profit or good press. That's how much integrity their results have. Google has
known about these sites for ages, yet after NYT writes all of the sudden they
are not relevant for users. Total BS.

Also the business of asking MC, VISA and Paypal to terminate services stinks,
we saw this with Wikileaks.

Their business is repulsive, personally I'd favor a $5 wrench
[http://xkcd.com/538/](http://xkcd.com/538/) removal service over this.

