Registration intimidation

(Warning! Warning! "Issues" post)

Wow. This article set me back on my heels. A newspaper decided to print the address of every registered pit bull owner in Commerce City. Reason?

...McIntyre said that most of Commerce City's pit bull owners had already thrust themselves into the public eye by writing letters to the editor or being vocal at city council meetings.

"They lost their privacy when they registered their pit bulls," she said.

What?

(note: the article linked is not in the Gateway, but another paper reporting on the controversy)

And what does this have to do with feral cats? you might ask.

I've long been an advocate of some sort of registration for feral cat colonies. Well, perhaps not an advocate. But if a municipality is insisting on "cat licensing," I felt that registering entire colonies (versus individual cats) with the municipality, was not out of line.

Now I'm not so sure. When we register our associations (via dog licenses, car registration, or even marraige or domestic partnerships for goodness sake) we do so because we are extending our hand in trust to our government. We are proclaiming ourselves part of the community by writing down our names and addresses, and trust that this will be used only by municipal officials. Yes, the dog enumerator could show up at my door tomorrow, and if Sadie gets loose and someone sees her, the DCO will be knocking with a ticket. We know our information is probably available via Freedom of Information if someone submits a request in writing. But I can be fairly sure if someone calls the town clerk and says "can I have a list of all the licensed dog owners in Spencer," the clerk is going to say "What? Why do you want it?" And she isn't going to post it on the town hall door just because she figures every resident has a right to know where the local dogs all are.

What if a newspaper suddenly decided, on their own, that feral cats were a public hazard, and printed the address of every registered feral cat colony? Can you imagine that any feral cat person would ever register a colony again? Can you imagine the distrust that would immediately cause between feral cat colony managers (who are already quite gun-shy) and the muncipality?

Do you suppose any pit bull owner in this city will step forward to register their dog in the future if they think some angry person who just needs an excuse to vent anger could show up on their doorstep? After all, the newspaper has just proclaimed "This is a bad person! They own a pit bull!"

It's not as if these are the addresses of people who have violated a local dog law, or who have been proven to have dangerous pit bulls (i.e. like a sex offender list).

How about printing the address of every registered gun owner?

I absolutely sympathize with the city for trying to deal with a difficult problem. But does the supposed good outweigh the possible damage, with this particular response?

And since when does speaking up at a public meeting or sending in a letter to the editor mean you've given up your right to privacy? Does this paper print the home address of every submittor after their letters? (Running off to check, now. Well, I can't find the Gateway online). We send in our full addresses to the paper so we can assure them we are actual residents. We trust that they will keep this for their own purposes, and that only our town will appear under our letters. Trust. Trust. Trust.

Tiny bit by tiny bit, I continue to see the trustful relationship required for a successful democracy (or what passes as a democracy in the U.S) eroding around us.

Via Dogma.