[Infowarrior] - Wired editor awarded almost $67, 000 in attorney fees

[Richard Forno]

(congrats Kevin!!!   -rf)


Editor awarded almost $67,000 in attorney fees

http://www.rcfp.org/news/2007/0124-foi-editor.html

      Wired News editor Kevin Poulsen, who sued to obtain information about
a crippling computer virus, should receive fees from U.S. Customs and Border
Patrol, a judge has ruled.

Jan. 24, 2007  ·   A federal judge in San Francisco has ruled that a Wired
News editor is entitled to almost $67,000 in attorney fees after
successfully suing to obtain documents about problems with a $1.7 billion
government computer system.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston wrote in her Tuesday order that senior
editor Kevin Poulsen "substantially prevailed" ­ the standard a requester
must meet to receive reimbursement for the cost of legal fees ­ in
litigation regarding his Freedom of Information Act request.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection claimed that Poulsen should not
receive legal fees because he did not prove there to be any benefit to the
public from the documents the agency was forced to disclose. However, the
judge noted that Poulsen has written two stories about a version of the worm
virus and its damaging effects on computer systems using records obtained
through his FOIA lawsuit.

Poulsen originally sued the agency in April under FOIA, after its refusal to
fulfill his request for documents that would explain the cause of a computer
malfunction that occurred in the US-VISIT system. The $1.7 billion dollar
program, which has recently been shut down, was in use for two years
tracking foreign nationals' visits into the United States while comparing
them to the list of suspected terrorists.

Customs and Border Protection declined the request, claiming that if
disclosed, the information in the documents could pose a threat to national
security.

After Poulsen filed suit, the agency released three heavily edited documents
totaling five pages designating the Zotob computer virus as the reason for
the system malfunction.

Zotob, a computer virus originating from Morocco, first entered the network
of Customs and Border Protection before infiltrating the Department of
Homeland Security's US-VISIT system, according to Poulsen's article, " The
Virus that Ate DHS," which appeared in Wired News.

In court, Customs and Border Protection defended its editing of the released
documents by concluding that disclosure of information could lead to
problems with the overall security of the system. On these same grounds, the
agency chose to withhold 12 other documents.

After reviewing the documents, Illston ordered in September that four more
of the documents be released and that some of the blacked out information
from the original documents be revealed.

(Poulsen v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Media Counsel: Lauren
Gelman, Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, Stanford,
Calif.) -- AG

Other links:

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      Judge's order
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      Wired News comparison of redacted documents