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OFFICER SAFETY: Stay away from Whosarat.com!

14K views 5 replies 5 participants last post by  JoninNH 
#1 ·
As many of you are aware there exists an internet website called Whosarat.com. That website purports to provide to its members the identities of actual law enforcement confidential informants and law enforcement officers, particularly undercover police officers. Recently, headquarters has passed along important information gathered by Minneapolis law enforcement authorities regarding the Whosarat.com website. Everyone should read the e-mail from Minneapolis, which is below in its entirety, and avoid visiting the site or the many other similar websites that exist on the internet.
Authorized by ASAC Kevin Lane
MINNEAPOLISPD
Subject: Update on WhosARat.com
Please let everyone know that the Whosarat.com website is not to be
trifled with. It is a reverse look up site that will grab the inquirer's
web IP address and add your info to the list of inquiring officers. The
website is owned by a former brilliant defense attorney who ingeniously
developed his plan. He originally sent a flyer to almost every law
enforcement agency in the USinforming them that there is a website
coming out known as, "whosarat.com". He failed to mention he was the
owner.
He informed all LE agencies that they should have their undercover guys
go on the site to see if they had been compromised. Well initially, he
did not have any intel but soon enough as soon as every good u/c cop in
the country began checking the site, he soon had a great list to add to
his site.
Trust me fellow officers, even if your curious, stay off the site. If
you're not on there already, a simple inquiry from you will easily add
you to the site.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Whosarat.com is a controversial
website, which, in its words, allows individuals to "post, share and
request any and all information that has been made public at some point
to at least 1 person of the public prior to posting it on this site
pertaining to local, state and federal Informants and Law Enforcement
Officers."
The site was founded in August 2004 by Sean Bucci, who is fighting
marijuana dealing charges. A Boston Herald story quoted him as saying
"I'm trying to level the playing field." His experiences gave him "a
deep, deep hate for the system for the way they handle informants."
The site's extensive disclaimer notes that in part that "All posts made
by users should be considered as inaccurate opinions unless backed by
official documents." It urges members to "Please post informants that
are involved with nonviolent crimes only."
The Department of Homeland Security is said to have issued an advisory
about the site, warning law enforcement officers not even to view the
site. "Visiting the site could result in the compromise of government IP
addresses. Searching the site for a particular name could result in that
name being cross-indexed to the IP address of the computer used to make
the inquiry. Searching for the names of officers or informants could
compromise those individual's identities. Any website is capable of
collecting IP address and search information from visitors, but this
site is remarkable because it makes visitor information public."
The site believes it is protected by legal precedents set in connection
with another website, charmichaelcase, which also posts information
about informants. ProEthics, Ltd., an ethics training and consulting
firm, named Whosarat.com its Unethical Website of the Month for August,
2004.
If any further questions go to
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-30-informants_x.htm for further details.
 
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#3 ·
Look you can certainly use this to mess things up for the fellow.

If it keeps search queries and names, just look up bogus names...liek the ones that are in the "from" field in those spam messages?

As well, look up know mobster names...don't ya think if a bunch of mobsters had their name showing up on a rat website, then would get their lawyers to have it taken down?

Lastly there are tons of proxy servers in this world that would let you browse with another IP addie.

Welcome to www.Whosadick.com. As of 11/30/06 due to the Tremendous amount of Information contained on this website and the Exorbitant amount of bandwidth needed and other operating costs we are forced to charge a small membership fee. We are also in the process of initiating a Worldwide whosarat.com promotion campaign that will include Radio,TV,Print Media and Billboards. Members are allowed to view All Information and Post New Information including access to the Informant Profiles, Agent Profiles, Message Board, Important Case Law, Top Secret Documents, Latest News, the Refer a Lawyer section and all of our recommended links.Memberships are nonrefundable. Lifetime memberships are valid for the life of the site. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and we hope you enjoy this one of a kind investigative resource tool.
 
#4 ·
Judges fear dangers of online 'rat' database

WASHINGTON (AP) — Police and prosecutors are worried that a website claiming to identify more than 4,000 informants and undercover agents will cripple investigations and hang targets on witnesses.

The website, WhosaRat.com, first caught the attention of authorities after a Massachusetts man put it online and named a few dozen people as turncoats in 2004. Since then, it has grown into a clearinghouse for mug shots, court papers and rumors.

Federal prosecutors say the site was set up to encourage violence, and federal judges around the country were recently warned that witnesses in their courtrooms may be profiled online.

"My concern is making sure cooperators are adequately protected from retaliation," said Chief Judge Thomas Hogan, who alerted other judges in Washington's federal courthouse. He said he learned about the site from a federal judge in Maine.

The website is the latest unabashedly public effort to identify witnesses or discourage helping police. "Stop Snitching" T-shirts have been sold in cities around the country and popular hip-hop lyrics disparage or threaten people who help police.

In 2004, NBA star Carmelo Anthony appeared in an underground Baltimore DVD that warned people they could be killed for cooperating with police. Anthony has said he was not aware of the DVD's message.

Such threats hinder criminal investigations, said Ronald Teachman, police chief in New Bedford, Mass., where murder cases have been stymied by witness silence and "Stop Snitching" T-shirts were recently for sale.

"Every shooting we have to treat like homicide. The victim's alive but he's not cooperative," Teachman said. "These kids have the idea that the worst offense they can commit is to cooperate with the police."

Sean Bucci, a former Boston-area disc jockey, set up WhosaRat.com after federal prosecutors charged him with selling marijuana in bulk from his house. Bucci is under house arrest awaiting trial and could not be reached, but a WhosaRat spokesman identifying himself as Anthony Capone said the site is a resource for criminal defendants and does not condone violence.

"If people got hurt or killed, it's kind of on them. They knew the dangers of becoming an informant," Capone said. "We'd feel bad, don't get me wrong, but things happen to people. If they decide to become an informant, with or without the website, that's a possibility."

The site offers biographical information about people whom users identify as witnesses or undercover agents. Users can post court documents, comments and pictures.

Some of those listed are well known, such as former Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland, who served 10 months in prison before testifying in a public corruption case. But many never made headlines and were identified as having helped investigators in drug cases.

For two years, anyone with an Internet connection could search the site. On Thursday, a day after it was discussed at a courthouse conference in Washington, the site became a subscription-only service. The site has also disabled the ability to post photos of undercover agents, Capone said, because administrators of the website do not want officers to be hurt.

Authorities disagree. In documents filed in Bucci's court case last month, federal prosecutors said they have information that Bucci set up the website 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 website, 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 website that included witness information in the form of "wanted" posters.

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 websites, 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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