Performers' Real Names, Addresses Posted on Wikileaks-Style Site

LOS ANGELES—Mainstream media has picked up a story the adult industry has known about for months: namely, that former D-list male performer and failed producer Donny Long is connected to leaks containing the real names of thousands of former and current adult performers on a notorious website with which he is associated. It is an open secret within the industry that the website, Pornwikileaks.com, has published the real names and addresses of over 12,000 performers, opening them up to potential harassment by predators or others seeking to embarrass them or their families. Access to performers' real names on the internet is nothing new, however. A quick Google search can reveal similar details, but the preponderance of information on the site and the propensity of those posting information to it to spew hateful vitriol, advocating harassment against adult performers and their families, is unprecedented. While it is unclear who owns the site, which is hosted in the Netherlands, the widely distained Long has posted to it frequently, encouraging other members of the site to anonymously post personally identifiable information about porn performers. Published mainstream media reports, based on a blog post from Mike South, have linked much of the leaked performer information to data available in the AIM Medical Associates database. However, much of the information posted on Pornwikileaks.com also includes pictures of performers' drivers' licenses and home addresses—data that is not accessible on the AIM database. The AIM database is hardly secure from potential abuse. Personal information about performers can be accessed by any registered adult producer looking for test results before hiring them. All it would take would be one rogue individual to log-in to the database using their  producer account to access thousands upon thousands of medical records, which producers depend on in order to be able to film adult content. However, it is not believed that Pornwikileaks posted medical information on any performers, which would violate medical privacy laws. Though AIM attorney Jeffrey Douglas told AVN that even though medical records were not published in this instance, accessing them improplerly still is a crime. It’s a misdemeanor under California law to improperly access medical records. “The crime is the breach, not the publication,” Douglas said. “Only under very limited circumstances that the publication of legally obtained info is a crime. The access point is the problem.” But what about the hate speech and the posts advocating harassment against performers’ families? Could the site be held liable if an individual commits a crime based on the site’s posts providing them with information and encouraging them to so? No, according to Douglas. Any potential crime is an individual act for which the site’s operators would not be held criminally liable. Civil liability in such cases is still being decided by the courts. The sheer volume of information posted on the Wikileaks-style site, though, suggests that the breach was perpetrated by more than just a sole individual—or someone working in concert with others to reveal reams of information from AIM's records, which are accessed individually by performers’ names. The sophistication of the breach in fact suggests a high-level hack of the AIM database. But AIM is not the only source of potentially harmful or embarrassing personally identifiable information about performers. Every time a scene or movie is sold by a production company to a VOD provider, or a photo set is sold to an adult magazine, or movie screeners are sent out to reviewers, 2257 information with real names, addresses, social security numbers and contact info for the performers is included. The potential always exists for there to be a leak somewhere in the dissemination of that information, to which an untold number of people have access. The greater the number of access points to such information, the harder it is to determine from where the leak(s) originated. Based on evidence South claims to have, AIM's database has been compromised—but, again, it is not possible that it is the only source of the leaks posted to Pornwikileaks.com. In fact, AIM issued a statement today saying it is conducting an investigation and that "there is preliminary information indicating that criminal behavior by persons or entities may have occurred" by accessing the database improperly. South wrote that he has spoken to people who said they used a particular stage name the only time they tested at AIM—one of whom never even shot a scene—and never used that name again anywhere else, and the name was among those leaked. The full text of the AIM statement issued today is, as follows: AIM Medical Associates, P.C. is investigating the possibility of a criminal breach of the medical record database. Substantial amounts of information posted on the site in question could not come from the AIM database because we do not possess that information. Specifically, home addresses and identification documents are not within the AIM database. Other testing businesses may or may not have such information on their databases. AIM is utilizing every available resource to conduct a thorough forensic investigation to confirm if a breach of security occurred here. If such a breach occurred, we shall take all available steps to see that the felonious behavior is criminally prosecuted to the maximum extent under the law. Accessing a database for improper purposes, violating medical privacy and extortion are all crimes in California. There is preliminary information indicating that criminal behavior by persons or entities may have occurred. In any case, the malicious nature of the site cannot be overstated. It is reprehensible that the site characterizes all adult actresses as 'whores,' and refers to some women as 'baby killers.' It is gratifying that the website has been largely unavailable at least over the past few days. We hope the hosting company removes this scurrilous site altogether. Douglas also mentioned that he was looking into finding a politician to sponsor a bill that would make it a crime to publish a digital depiction of a personal identity document without permission. “There is very little 1st Amendment value to replicating the ID of another,” he said. “I, we, the FSC, or any combination of those three, are going to try to find a sponsor for a bill in California that would make it a crime to publish an accurate digital depitction of a personal identifying document without permission. What is the public value in printing an ID? I don’t see it, but I do see a lot of harm that can come of it.” Pornwikileaks.com currently is offline. We can only hope it stays that way for the safety of the performers.