class action lawsuits about mugshots

Innocent have to pay in order to save her reputation

Publicly accessible databases can bring problems. For example, if they contain names and mug shots of those arrested, called mugshots.

In the United States, such information is often available to the public, the Federal Act Freedom of Information Act or statutory regulations in individual states make this possible. On its basis, the recordings of the law enforcement agencies will be uploaded. Used the names and images of, for example, then such Offender Locator Apps that display convicted sex offenders who are in the neighborhood.



Some sites have even specialized in automated and collected the published names and photos of the authorities to publish again. Mugshots+com's such a page. Such offers but sometimes lead to serious problems - fixed for innocent people.

For example, have the open government laws of Florida means that in principle all mugshots published and thus can be collected and archived from vendors such mugshots+com. This happens very quickly after the arrest and also applies to photos of people who turn out to be innocent later. Mugshots+com collects the pictures before someone is brought to justice.

Although the site refers to the principle that as long as everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty. But the mugshots are not deleted from the page when the judgment has fallen. The database thus contains photos from proven innocent. The operator simply indicate only that all data come from the authorities and can not be changed or expanded.

As the company safe Shepherd has now found an innocent man has to pay a lot of money if he wants to remove his photo from the side. For this purpose he must hire a third party, which then causes the deletion.

Safe Shepherd is a young company that specializes in this kind of reputation management ("reputation repair"). On behalf of their customers, they researched what information can be found on their clients in the network and possibly contacted the operator, so that information will be deleted, which could damage the reputation of the client.

Mugshots+com found in the case of Noah Sidman-Gale of Safe Shepherd that only two third-party called Unpublishmugshots and Unpublisharrest ensure that names and photos will be removed by mugshots+com. These third-party make it a business: Removing a record from the database proud costs 399 U.S. dollars.

Of course, the impression arises that behind Mugshots+com and the other two companies put the same makers who believe they have discovered a business model. Mugshots+com on it is, however, the two companies were "Independently owned and operated vendors", that would have independent owners and operators. However, none of the websites provides information about their work provider. The paper has Mugshots+com and Unpublishmugshots contacted by web form and asked for a statement, an answer is still pending. Unpublishmugshotshas now responded and announced that there was no connection between the two companies, except that Unpublishmugshots is a recognized supplier to erase data on mugshots+com 47 and similar sites. It also will provide the in-house call center for requests to delete data from Mugshots+com.

Mugshots+com is not the only site of its kind An initiative to bring a class action against those vendors on the way, lists more than two dozen Mugshot pages. In many cases, it is said in the initiative, which amounts to charge for removing a photo between 100 and 400 dollars.

A first congressman named Roger Bruce has recognized the problem and now calls for a statutory provision with which the permanent publication of photos of innocent people will be stopped.

But one good thing about the service of Unpublishmugshots and Unpublisharrest: Who wants to remove two or more photos of the site gets quantity discount.