Brittany Voie Commentary: Facebook Group Posts Information on Reported Stay-Home Order Violations

Posted

Where do you stand on reporting violators of the Governor’s “Stay Home-Stay Healthy proclamation?”

A few weeks back, Washington State launched a single page form online where people could report violators of the COVID-19 executive orders “prohibiting people from leaving their home or place of residence except to conduct or participate in (1) essential activities, and/or (2) employment in providing essential business services.”

Now, initially, I didn’t pay much attention to this submission form. I saw the headlines about it and chatter on social media, but I personally didn’t feel compelled to report anything, so I largely ignored the conversation. But what caught my eye later was something posted by “Re Open Washington State For Business” via Facebook.

Re Open Washington State for Business got ahold of what appears to be a spreadsheet from the state containing the complete list of complaints which in some cases includes full names and contact information for many of the reporting individuals.

I found this really interesting personally because I’ve made requests for information from our local health department myself. In cases where I’ve suspected malicious reporting, I’ve requested names on formal reports and been denied on the grounds that it’s protected information.

I was curious to learn more.

Re Open Washington states that the spreadsheet is the result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, and with such exhaustive data, it was hard to imagine it wasn’t genuine data from a real records request.

Like I said, the spreadsheet contains thousands of lines of data that roughly appear to match the original online form provided with the Washington State seal on it. It’s worth noting that nothing in the URL of the form page indicates that it’s within a “.gov” website (app.smartsheet.com), other than linking to a few government pages. This method would be an easy way to exploit information from unsuspecting people — are you listening, state IT department? But I digress.

According to the “Wayback Machine” (aka: the online internet archive), when the violation submission form was posted back in March, the disclaimer stating that “all of the information collected at this site is considered public information and may be subject to inspection and copying by members of the public, per RCW 42.56,” was at the bottom of the form.



By April, it had been moved to the very top of the submission form. Text included links directly to a page on the Governor’s website detailing the privacy policy in finer detail.

But, it would appear that many of the people who submitted information did not understand these details. While some of those reporting left their name and contact info blank, others left their full name, contact info, and desperate pleas to stay anonymous for fear of retaliation.

Some of these people were employees of companies who felt they were being forced to work in unsafe conditions or those that put them at greater risk for contracting COVID-19. Some of them told stories of their concerns dismissed or fear of even speaking out at all out of fear of losing their job.

On one of the original posts from the Re Open Washington Facebook page, in the shares, one Facebook user, Ben Lamotte, had the following to say about those who were listed as having reported violating businesses and individuals: “We shall be visiting these f---ing snitches on there (sic) doorstep.”

Regardless of how anyone feels about reporting businesses for executive order violations, there is bound to be real fallout for many people.

 

•••

Brittany Voie is a columnist for The Chronicle. She lives south of Chehalis with her husband and two young sons. She welcomes correspondence from the community at voiedevelopment@comcast.net.