The Aftermath of a Privacy Breach...

I posted a while back about an unfolding story in Cleveland involving a judge suing the Cleveland Plain Dealer for unmasking her identity as a pseudonymous poster on the cleveland.com website (pseudonym:  "lawmiss") about a case she was presiding over.  She was removed from the case, but the newspaper kept digging and found that the "lawmiss" ID was used on a number of other websites and was attached to various racial and other inappropriate comments for a judge to be making.  While none of the other websites has identified "lawmiss" as the judge, the Plain Dealer ascertained that many of the postings were made from the judge's work computer.

Questions have arisen in the Cleveland news media about whether any other action should be taken against the judge or whether potential defendants could have her removed from their cases on the basis of comments she has made online.  

One thing that really interests me is the fact that all of this came about because the original website disclosed the "lawmiss" identity as belonging to the judge (likely in concert with her daughter).  If this had not been disclosed, none of the other information would ever have come to light.  It seems likely that the original website was in breach of its own privacy policy and probably several other privacy-protecting laws.  However, there is an obvious public interest balance in this case.  My question is:  What happens next time when it isn't a judge or a public official whose identity is disclosed?  If someone has a vendetta against someone else and discloses their identity on one website, their pseudonymous comments can potentially be tracked all over the Internet whether disclosure of the identifying information is in the public interest or not.

And what about the case where someone with a vendetta against someone else poses as that other person online and posts inappropriate comments in the hope of getting the victim into trouble?  How easy is it for a victim of such conduct to disprove the inference that (s)he made the postings herself/himself?  (This is more likely to arise in a case where a name or other identifying information is attached to comments, but the name/identifying information is false.)

Also, if the Plain Dealer and cleveland.com are lauded for disclosing the judge's identity in this case, will this give the sign to other online service providers that they are not required to take their own privacy policies seriously?

Comments

[Peter]

The question is: what is the remedy the law provides for these breaches? It seems to me off the top of my head that the judge you wrote about is not very likely going to be able to recovery anything based on a breach of contract claim against the site that disclosed her identity in violation of its EULA. How could the site foresee that kind of damage flowing from its breach?

But you suggest the site was also likely in breach of "several privacy-protecting laws." Which ones? And do they provide remedies to private parties?