By Tristram Korten
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
A Sarasota lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for State Attorney in the 12th Judicial Circuit of Florida in 2012 is suing his former opponent and other officials in U.S. District Court for using a secure motor vehicle database to view his personal information during the campaign. The database search violated the federal Driver Privacy and Protection Act, the lawsuit alleges.
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John Torraco
John Torraco said he filed the lawsuit in August, three years after he became aware of the violations, because he had initially waited for the State Attorney’s Office to contact him about a settlement. No one ever contacted him, and the statute of limitations was about to run out. Officials with the SAO did not respond to a phone call seeking comment.
In 2011, Earl Moreland, the 12th Circuit’s State Attorney, announced he would not seek re-election. Ed Brodsky, Moreland’s most senior deputy, ran for the position as a Republican. Torraco, a Democrat, opposed Brodsky. The 12th Circuit comprises Manatee, Desoto and Sarasota counties.
During the campaign, three employees of the State Attorney’s Office, including Brodsky’s personal assistant, and a sheriff’s deputy repeatedly accessed the Driver and Vehicle Information Database (DAVID) to view Torraco’s information. The DAVID inquiries were performed between August 2011 and March 2012, according to state records. Under the law, a search can only be performed for law enforcement or other official purposes. A log must be kept and information identifying the case must be recorded.
Ed Brodsky
In April 2012, an anonymous person notified Torraco about the unauthorized DAVID searches. In May, Torraco sent a public records request to the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles asking if anyone had accessed his information.
Months later, officials informed him about the searches. The DHSMV also notified the State Attorney’s Office, which then conducted an internal review. According to a Sept. 18, 2012, letter from State Attorney’s Office Executive Director Jennifer Moran to the DHSMV, the employees were verbally reprimanded, but no further action was taken because “there was no intent to misuse the information.”
Moran also wrote: “Mr. Torraco was not notified of these inquiries because nothing was done with the records.”
But Torraco’s lawsuit points out that one of the secretaries was first contacted about the breach after the internal review was over.
“They completed the investigation two weeks before talking to the person who ran the search,” Torraco said. Other than the verbal reprimand, no action was taken against those who ran the searches.
Moran notified the Florida Department of Law Enforcement of the improper searches and sent a memo to employees on July 24, 2012, warning that accessing DAVID without a “legitimate business purpose” could result in termination.
Torraco said he has received no answers for why his information was accessed and must take the SAO’s word for it that the searches were not related to Brodsky’s campaign against him.