The Web site www.whosarat.com promotes itself as the \"largest online database of informants and agents,\" listing 4,727 profiles of \"rats\" -- 426 of whom are purportedly of undercover law enforcement agents.
Who’s A Rat – Largest Online Database of Informants and Agents
The site's disclaimer states: \"The information contained within is definitely not an attempt to intimidate or harass informants or agents or to obstruct justice. This Web site's purpose is for defendants with few resources to investigate, gather and share information about a witness or law enforcement officer.\"
WhosaRat.com is the largest online database of police informants, jailhouse snitches, rats, squealers, traitors, narks, finks, proffers, and DEA spies. Members have full access to more than 5000 snitch profiles, many with a PHOTO of the rat as well as secret documents and info like Cooperation Agreements, the area the traitor resides, and the specific law enforcement agency (local police, DEA, or government agency) the Informant colludes with. Whosarat.com is a very important, one-of-a-kind legal investigative resource tool for the Public. Information is power and the Government, Prosecutors and Police should not be the only ones to possess that Power. The Public has a right to know.
A Web site touting itself as the largest online database of informants and undercover agents has local law enforcement officials concerned about the safety of sources critical to criminal prosecution.
Undercover investigations are crucial to getting gangs, guns and drugs out of the community's neighborhoods, said Shelby County District Attorney General Bill Gibbons. The district attorney's office, like law enforcement agencies across the country, uses confidential informants and undercover agents regularly to prosecute criminal cases.
A disclaimer on whosarat.com reads in part, "This Web site and the information contained within is definitely not an attempt to intimidate or harass informants or agents or to obstruct justice. This Web site's purpose is for defendants with few resources to investigate, gather and share information about a witness or law enforcement officer. Freedom of speech, Freedom of Information Act, and an individual's constitutional right to investigate his or her case protect this Web site."
But Mike Dunavant, district attorney general for the five-county 25th district, which includes Fayette and Tipton counties, said the Web site causes him to worry about the safety of informants and undercover agents used by his office to prosecute cases.
Good Jobs First, where Digest editor Phil Mattera is the research director, is getting ready to launch a website that provides an up-to-date, searchable database of economic development subsidies that Wal-Mart has received from state and local governments throughout the United States. Wal-Mart Subsidy Watch includes data on approximately 300 deals worth some $1.2 billion that Good Jobs First has tracked down, initially for its 2004 report Shopping for Subsidies and through additional research conducted as part of the creation of the new website. The database is searchable by geographic location and type, and it includes state tallies as well as lists of the largest deals by type and nationwide.
Assembling information on a party's criminal record requires looking separately at federal and state sources. The federal part is relatively straightforward. If you get a subscription to the PACER service provided by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, you can search the dockets of individual federal district courts or do a combined search of nearly all those courts through PACER's U.S. Party Case Index. You can get limited information without a PACER account by using Justia. There have been recent reports that plea agreements and related documents may be removed from PACER because of concern they can be used by the controversial website Who's A Rat, which compiles names of informants. State courts are another matter entirely. There is no publicly available database that combines dockets from all state courts, and many of those courts are not online at all. You may need to go to the relevant county or city courthouse to check the docket. To find out which jurisdictions are online, you can either track down the court's website or use subscription link compilations such as Legal Dockets Online, which also has links to federal and state inmate databases. There are commercial databases that make it possible to do statewide searches of the dockets that are online. The range from versatile and expensive services such as Courtlink to pay-as-you-go sites such as Search Systems, which charges more modest fees.
As part of its never-ending quest to expand its scope of coverage, Google announced recently that it was partnering with four states to make some of their public records available through the search engine. The arrangements with the states--Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia--will cover information that is already accessible via official websites but is not captured by the spider programs used by Google and other search engines to track online information. For example, Arizona will make available to Google data such as its list of registered contractors and its database of real estate agents. 2ff7e9595c
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