A newspaper in suburban New York that caused quite a controversy by publishing the names and addresses of local gun owners on interactive map has removed the information from its web site to comply with a new state privacy law.
Legislation passed earlier this week lets gun permit holders request confidentiality and imposed a 120-day moratorium on the release of such data, wrote Janet Hasson, publisher of the Journal News of West Nyack, N.Y in a letter to readers. The New York News Publishers Association has vowed to challenge the law to make sure general information like the gun owners' zip codes, gender and reasons for withholding personal information can still be made public, the Journal News reports.
After last month's mass-shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., the Gannett-owned Journal News published an interactive map that showed the names and addresses of licensed handgun holders in Westchester and Rockland counties in New York. The paper had used Freedom of Information Act records to obtain the data. Hasson said the map was viewed almost 1.2 million times.
In response to receiving a flood of angry calls and emails about the decision to publish personal information on gun owners, the newspaper brought on further criticism by hiring armed guards for its offices. A snapshot of the map with its red dots will remain on the site "to remind the community that guns are a fact of life we should never forget," Hasson wrote.
Source: http://bit.ly/13Qofm1
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