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Comment by jjk166 | Hacker News Reader

For reference this is the form for requesting motor vehicle records in Kansas [0]

It asks for "your" information to find the record, but based on the allowed uses you can definitely get records for other people. I would say a journalist accessing DUI records would fall under permitted use case M. That accessing this is identity theft is a farcical claim.

[0] https://www.kansas.gov/ssrv-mvr-ltd/

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Exactly. Obtaining information about someone is not identity theft. It might be stalking, it might be journalism, it might be credit-reporting, but it is not identity theft.

Pretending to _be_ someone, _stealing their identity_, is identity theft. Absolutely nothing in this story sounds like that, and it sounds like the warrant is entirely farcical.

I think it depends. Reading the form, if you filled it out and clicked the "I am requesting my own record" button, that's holding yourself out as though you were the person whose records you are requesting, which certainly seems like it could be construed as identity theft.

I'm not saying this happened here, but if a journalist engaged in hacking or fraud to obtain material to publish, that would be "journalism", but it would also be a crime (the research, not the publication). Obviously, the freedom of the press doesn't include the ability to do anything they want in pursuit of a story.

No one is arguing that journalists are not bound by laws, the issue here is that not only is there no proof they broke any laws here, but even the idea that they might have is laughable, given that this was a public database they had permission to access. It's like accusing someone walking out of a public library with a book is a thief who stole the book.

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