What Stays in Vegas : The World of Personal Data - Lifeblood of Big Business - and the End of Privacy As We Know It (9781610394192) by Tanner Adam

Author:Tanner, Adam [Tanner, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781610394192
Publisher: Perseus Book Group

Kyle Prall at the state capitol in Austin, Texas, in front of portraits of state legislators. Source: Author photo.

In late 2012 Prall traveled to Las Vegas. Like so many others, he was hoping to realize a dream. For him the goal was not winning in the casino but gaining respectability by attending a Crime Stoppers conference. He met with law enforcement officials to convince them that Busted! could help in the fight against crime. He left the event so enthusiastic that he issued a press release. “Our participation in the event was a great experience. Crime Stoppers understood the Busted! Grid vision and fully embraced what we are doing,” he wrote.15 Soon afterward he started calling Busted! “the premier crime information network.”16

Despite the upbeat words, 2013 turned out to be a rather difficult year for Prall. Class-action lawsuits against mug shot websites gathered force.17 Leading credit card companies said they would stop processing payments to remove mug shots, and Google changed its search results to give less prominence to these images. The long-running tabloid television show Inside Edition hunted Prall down in Austin to confront him about his website.18 During this whole time, Prall was mostly silent. He had always kept a low public profile, but in 2012 he had agreed to share his story for this book. He had visited me at Harvard that year, and we had participated in two public lectures together. I had also visited him in Austin. But in 2013, he went incommunicado except for an occasional email. Finally, at the end of that year, he got back in touch.

Busted! had changed its policy, he said. The company would display all new mug shots for fifteen days; those of violent or serious offenders would stay up for thirty days. After that, people could opt out of having their records appear in search engine results free of charge, although subscribers to Busted! could still view the record.

“We made the change in part for the merchant processing difficulties we were experiencing, and the frivolous lawsuits,” he said, referring to the credit card payment issues and legal challenges. “The decision was also based on the fact that this has been our plan all along, to stop charging for removals.” Prall had told me that was the long-term plan when we met in 2012. Along the way, he had tested the limits of personal data on the Internet and caused a lot of pain. But in at least one regard, he had succeeded: his job was not boring.

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