Greenwood & Associates Attorneys At Law 2301 Carew Tower 441 Vine Street Cincinnati, Ohio 45202 (513) 684-0101 Fax: (513) 684-0077 Internet: stgrnwd@iac.net Press Release For IMMEDIATE Release 8/7/95 Contacts: Scott T. Greenwood Peter D. Kennedy 513/684-0101 Computer Users Fight Back: CINCINNATI ELECTRONIC BULLETIN BOARD SYSTEM USERS FILE CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST SHERIFF SIMON LEIS Seven subscribers to a Cincinnati electronic bulletin board system filed a class action lawsuit today in federal court against Sheriff Simon L Leis, Jr., and other law enforcement officials. On June 16, 1995, members of the Hamilton County Computer Crimes Task Force raided the offices of the Cincinnati Computer Connection BBS and seized the entire computer system, including all the private electronic mail of the subscribers. This is the first user class action challenging a government seizure of computer material. According to the search warrant used to justify the raid, the Task Force was seeking 45 computer image files on a system that contained hundreds of thousands of public and private messages. The seven subscribers represent a class of thousands of users of the Cincinnati Computer Connection electronic bulletin board. The lead plaintiff is Steve Guest, a 36-year old computer system analyst who runs his own business, in large part using the Cincinnati Computer Connection BBS. Other plaintiffs include Denise and Ben Kelley, active bulletin board users and grandparents of seven; Nelda Sturgill, a registered nurse who used the bulletin board to keep up with medical news and to swap recipes; and Randy Bowling, who suffers from a speech impediment caused by a head injury, who used CCC BBS as his primary way to communicate and to study computer science. "The faces of the CCC subscribers were the faces of Greater Cincinnati -- working men and women, retirees, mothers, fathers, grandparents and children, Republicans, Democrats and Independents," the lawsuit alleges. The users of the system claim that the wholesale seizure of the computer bulletin board system violated their constitutional right to free speech and association and that the seizure of their private e-mail violated their right to privacy and federal law. "The Task Force used a drift net to troll for a tiny amount of supposed 'computer porn,'" said Cincinnati civil rights lawyer Scott T. Greenwood, who represents the plaintiffs. "In the process, they netted an enormous amount of entirely irrelevant material, and shut down a constitutionally-protected forum for speech and association." "We believe that the law prohibits the indiscriminate seizure of private electronic communications," said Peter D. Kennedy, an Austin, Texas attorney who also represents the plaintiffs, and who represented Steve Jackson Games when that company sued the U.S. Secret Service for illegally seizing its electronic bulletin board system in 1990. "It is a fundamental principle of law that, even during legitimate investigations, the government must limit its searches and seizures to things related to the crime under investigation. Here, the Task Force took everything, including thousands of innocent persons' private mail and public notices." Greenwood added, "Whether the sheriff and the computer 'net police' like it or not, the Bill of Rights is not optional just because they don't like it or understand it. Shutting down a computer system and seizing people's private communications makes a mockery of the First Amendment." The lawsuit claims that Sheriff Leis and the Task Force violated the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, several provisions of the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, and Ohio common law privacy rights, and seeks actual damages, statutory damages, and punitive damages on behalf of the seven plaintiffs and the entire class. For further information, contact: Scott T. Greenwood Greenwood & Associates 2301 Carew Tower 441 Vine Street Cincinnati, Ohio 45202 (513) 684-0101 stgrnwd@iac.net Peter D. Kennedy George, Donaldson & Ford LLP 114 W. 7th Street, Suite 1000 Austin, Texas 78701 (512) 495-1400 pkennedy@io.com ###