As a Washington
State judge prepares to decide whether the contents of
Spokane, Wash., mayor James E. West's city-owned computer
are part of the public record, the mayor is arguing
that numerous gay-oriented photos on the laptop were
placed there automatically. But a computer expert hired
by the local newspaper said West and his lawyers are wrong
and that material of a "pornographic nature" was
deliberately downloaded to West's computer.
Adams County superior court judge Richard Miller
has been asked to consider West's effort to keep the
contents of his computer sealed.
West faces a December 6 recall election over a
sex scandal involving gay men, and he is desperately
trying to keep the contents of his laptop computer
secret on the grounds that they are too offensive for the
public to see. Earlier this week West's lawyers filed
a court document saying a city computer expert was
able to prove that the Web site Gay.com automatically
placed pictures and other material about gay men onto the
computers of visitors to the site.
"All of the thumbnail pictures from the member
profiles that I viewed had been automatically
downloaded to the Internet cache folder," Garv Brakel
wrote in his affidavit.
West, a longtime Republican state senator and
opponent of gay rights, has acknowledged that he was a
closeted gay man but has denied breaking any
laws. He has admitted that he visited Gay.com on his work
computer but is denying that he deliberately
downloaded some 1,800 files that The Spokesman-Review
newspaper is demanding to see.
Based on his testing, Brakel said a recent
affidavit by Josiah Roloff, a computer expert hired by
the newspaper, may be inaccurate. Roloff had contended
that a user must select and view the pictures in member
profiles in order for them to be downloaded to a computer.
Roloff, of Global CompuSearch LLC of Spokane,
was hired by lawyers for The Spokesman-Review, which
since May 6 has been seeking access to the records on
West's computer as part of its investigation into
whether he abused his office by offering young gay men
public appointments and jobs in exchange for sex.
Roloff said Wednesday that Brakel's affidavit is
flawed. While it is true that images and Web pages
visited are saved in temporary Internet file folders
without the user taking any action, Roloff said the items he
was discussing in his affidavit were deliberately
filed by the user. "The history files in this case
indicate a purposeful, conscious choice to access
individual profiles on Gay.com.," Roloff said. "These
profiles then produced images that were saved to the West
computer. These profiles and their accompanying images
did not magically 'open up' simply because the user
went to Gay.com," Roloff said, adding that
the images "can only be described as of a pornographic nature."
Spencer Moore, a spokesman for Gay.com, said
Wednesday that the Web site will not get involved
in West's legal battle, even if it means that contents
from its site end up being released to the public. "We have
no idea where his images came from," Moore said. "There is
no way to know if it came from somebody e-mailing him direct."
Moore said that material viewed on Gay.com is
cached on a user's computer. But images are not
automatically downloaded to a person's computer
without the user's knowledge, Moore said.
Brakel is a 30-year expert in the fields of
information technology management and system
administration who has worked for the city since 1998.
He was asked by Mark Busto, a lawyer hired by the Spokane
city council, to determine whether West violated city
policies in the use of his computer and to determine
what information is placed automatically on a user's
computer after he logs on to Gay.com.
Brakel said he took a computer identical to
West's, made sure the hard drive was "clean," and
installed standard city programs. He went on to
Gay.com on November 8, witnessed by two city computer
technicians, and registered as a member. "As a result
of registering on Gay.com, the Internet cache folder
on the tablet PC 'jumped' by 451 files," Brakel's
declaration said. "These files were downloaded onto the hard
drive when I registered on Gay.com, without my knowledge or consent."
Brakel then clicked on the "member profiles"
link on Gay.com and searched for males between the
ages of 18 and 50 within a 30-mile radius of downtown
Spokane. The results were displayed as head-and-shoulders
pictures with short text descriptions. He clicked on one of
the pictures, which brought up a profile page, a
larger picture, and a series of small "thumbnail" pictures.
Brakel said he did not click on any of the
thumbnail pictures. But when he looked at the
computer's Internet cache folder, all of the thumbnail
pictures from member profiles he viewed had been
automatically downloaded to the folder, even though he
did not click on them. (AP)