“Within forty-five minutes, my staff was able to retrieve online documents with the social security numbers of numerous local elected officials and other high-profile individuals,” said Councilmember Dunn. “If we had a criminal agenda, these people would be victims of identity-theft by now.”

The problem was revealed when a constituent of District Nine contacted Dunn’s office on Wednesday, June 21st, 2006 to inform them that by performing a records search on herself, she had found her social security number on the REALS website. After a subsequent investigation by Councilmember Dunn’s staff on the magnitude of the problem, it was found that REALS knew of this issue and that it is ongoing. Currently, REALS puts the burden of removing social security numbers on the affected citizen.

“Placing this burden on the individual to contact REALS to remove their information is unacceptable,” Dunn said. “King County has been entrusted with this information, and we need to show basic responsibility in how we handle it.”

Councilmember Dunn sent a letter to the director of REALS on June 22 outlining the issues his office uncovered and urging that access to the site be disabled to the public until the problems could be addressed. On Friday morning, King County Executive Ron Sims was made aware of the problem as well. Councilmember Dunn received a response on Friday afternoon from REALS explaining the need to provide low to no cost public records for King County citizens. In it, the director of REALS writes, “…in recognition that a small minority of documents, other than those identified above, may have been submitted for recording with a personal identifier embedded in the document, in 2003 King County proactively developed procedures to allow for the removal of those images from our records website.”