Snitch Tracker received an email from the State of Washington today containing a complaint filed against us by Robert Davies of Ocean Park, Washington. It is a follow up to a fake complaint he filed in 2020 that we don't recall ever being informed about. Both complaints pertain to his use of a form created by the State of Washington for the purpose of soliciting allegations that people were violating mask mandates, social distancing guidelines, and/or doing business when the government unconstitutionally ordered people to close their businesses. Unbeknownst to most people including Mr. Davies, public records laws in Washington created an opportunity for an attorney to legally obtain an unredacted dataset containing tens of thousands of complaints. The data was published on a website called We The Governed. They were nice enough to produce an Excel sheet with all the reports which we downloaded and inserted into our database (learn more at https://snitchtracker.com/coronavirus/).
Mr. Davies claimed in August of 2020, "The site operators report to have acquired my reports and personal information from data dumps which could have only been hacked from whatever Washington State-based agency was responsible for receiving and storing them." That simply is not true. None of the data was hacked. When a lawyer sends the government a public records request and the government responds with a big batch of data it is simply not possible to accurately describe that data as being hacked. His original complaint submitted under penalty of perjury read as follows with line breaks omitted:
"On the advice of King County Public Health during the early lockdown phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, I reported business violations of the pandemic-related health codes I observed through the official online web portal I was provided a link to. I was shocked to discover recently, however, that those reports, along with my name, phone number, and email address, have been doxxed on a site called "Cop Blaster". The site operators report to have acquired my reports and personal information from data dumps which could have only been hacked from whatever Washington State-based agency was responsible for receiving and storing them. My personal information is now listed on Cop Blaster's "Coronavirus Snitch List". I am disappointed, first of all, in the apparent lack of cybersecurity in King County (or state) government. But I'm secondly disappointed that I was never notified of the data leak. Is your office aware of the data leaks, and is there any legal action it can take against sites like Cop Blaster for doxxing private citizens' information, particularly those being targeted by what appears to be an anti-government extremist organization?" - Robert Davies 8/30/2020
Notice how Mr. Davies begins by admitting that in April of 2020 he did in fact snitch on the World Evangelical Church in Auburn, Washington by submitting the following accusation:
"This church has maintained regular Sunday service since the start of the outbreak. There are nearly 20 vehicles in the church parking lot at the time of writing, and more continue arriving. The church is broadcasting a live feed of their service, whereby congregants can be seen disregarding social distancing and face covering measures: http://lttw-church.com/archive/video/". - Robert Davies (see https://snitchtracker.com/rat/16329/robert-davies-snitched-on-light-to-the-world-evangelical-church-in-auburn)
Mr. Davies cannot escape being accurately labeled a snitch by complaining about it after snitching on people. We do believe that Mr. Davies, like most snitches that used the same form, was truly shocked to find out that his information had been published online. We were surprised that public records laws in Washington permitted such disclosures because usually people don't find out they've been snitched on until after charges have been filed against them. The government usually argues that informant information is exempt from disclosure unless the requestor has a right to confront their accuser. The right to confront one's accuser doesn't typically exist until one has been formally accused in a court of law. We don't know what part of Washington's public records laws permit lawyers to obtain large unredacted datasets such as this (https://snitchtracker.com/uploads/files/Large-gatherings.xlsx) but we know it exists somewhere (see video below).
Mr. Davies was nice enough to accurately describe us as "an anti-government extremist organization." We thank Mr. Davies for recognizing the true nature of our hard work. To those ends, we feel the need to point out that Mr. Davies should blame his government for his problem. It was his government that solicited the information from him, failed to disclose the potential for that information legally being shared with third parties, failed to notify him after disclosing his information to third parties, and left him with no statutory recourse to suppress the information. We think that people should be informed of the potential for disclosure before the government solicits information from them. We also think far fewer people would use such forms if they knew their information could be disclosed.
The State of Washington does not appear to have learned from its mistake. Today they sent us everything a violent psychotic stalker would want if inclined to track down Mr. Davies, but fortunately for him we are not inclined to do that. A lot of people don't realize when they fill out forms with so called "consumer protection" agencies that the subjects of their complaints will receive copies complete with all their contact information including their home address, phone number, and personal email address. Way more information than any business needs just to respond to a complaint.
It seems like it will be only a matter of time until government disclosures such as these end tragically. Imagine what would happen if someone like Mr. Davies were complaining about a meth lab operating out of a local business. That business could get a copy of the complaint with all his information from some automated system in a matter of hours and he could be dead in a day. If the business doesn't get him someone up or down the chain in their ecosystem would. Meth labs supply people who depend on them, so if you take out a dealer's supply he will want to do something about that. That is of course the "worst case" scenario not present here but the point is that "consumer protection" has a policy that endangers consumers.
PERJURY BY ROBERT DAVIES
Robert Davies made a false claim under penalty of perjury when submitting his original complaint by falsely claiming that the data was hacked. Fortunately for Mr. Davies, the statute of limitations for felonies in the State of Washington is three years. If he filed his complaint with a federal agency the statute of limitations would be five years, but that does not appear to be the case.
Mr. Davies does not appear to have perjured himself in his most recent statement to the State of Washington. That statement with line breaks omitted reads as follows:
"Good Afternoon, I authorize your office to communicate on my behalf with Snitchtracker/snitchtracker.com (previously Cop Blaster/copblaster.com at the time of my original request) to remove my personally identifiable information (PII) from its site. For reference, the (defanged) URLs featuring my doxxed PII are: https://snitchtracker[.]com/rat/16329/robert-davies-snitched-on-light-to-the-world-evangelical-church-in-auburn https://snitchtracker[.]com/uploads/files/Large-gatherings.xlsx Additionally, I authorize your office to refer this matter to King County, who was the custodian of my data when it was compromised, or other agencies or organizations as appropriate. Please note, King County failed to notify me of the breach. To date I have received no communications from any King County agency regarding it. Please also find attached screen shots of an intimidating text message from an unknown number directly referencing the doxxing post. The sender texted it to my mobile phone number, which was compromised in the post, along with my personal email address and legal name. Clearly, my PII was posted online by this organization for the purposes of doxxing and inciting harassment against me. Respectfully, Robert Davies" - Robert Davies 10/8/2024
Notice that while he refers to his "compromised" data saying it was "breached" which many reasonable consumers would think implies hacking, that might not rise to the level of a perjurious statement. While those words viewed in conjunction with Mr. Davies' prior statement could seem intended to imply that the data was hacked, one might be able to defend use of those words in court as broad statements of opinion. Mr. Davies likely feels that his data has been "compromised" as a matter of his own personal opinion. However, he still uses the term "breach" which could imply a "data breach" which has a broad range of definitions ranging from traditional hacking to simply losing or accidentally giving away information, but calling a lawful disclosure in response to a public records request a "breach" is pushing it even if spoken as pure opinion. Mr. Davies probably feels the same as he would if he had been hacked but that doesn't make him a hacking victim. The word "hacked" describes a specific type of data breach which has a very specific universally understood meaning when it comes to data which is "breaking into a computer system" (see https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/criminal-charges/hacking-laws-and-punishments.html). No unauthorized access is alleged in this case nor are we aware of anyone in the government being accused of exceeding authorized access. This case is simply not a hack and any complaint alleging that it is in our opinion a fake complaint.
We will not be responding to the State of Washington on this matter because we do not believe in legitimizing government agencies with our time. The federal government stole enough of our founder's time years ago to justify refusing to spend any time at all responding to any government agency about anything at all. If they have a problem with that they can take it out of the time they stole.
CONCLUSION
Robert Davies of Ocean Park, Washington is a creative writer with a history of falsely accusing people of hacking. Nobody hacked anyone to get the Coronavirus Snitch List. Falsely accusing a legally obtained data dump of being hacked data under penalty of perjury is illegal but fortunately Mr. Davies did that over three years ago in a state where the statute of limitations for most felonies is three years.