WEB SITES LISTING INFORMANTS CONCERN JUSTICE DEPT.

There are three "rats of the week" on the home page of whosarat.com,
a Web site devoted to exposing the identities of witnesses
cooperating with the government. The site posts their names and mug
shots, along with court documents detailing what they have agreed to
do in exchange for lenient sentences.

Last week, for instance, the site featured a Florida man who agreed
in September to plead guilty to cocaine possession but not gun
charges in exchange for his commitment to work "in an undercover role
to contact and negotiate with sources of controlled substances." The
site says it has identified 4,300 informers and 400 undercover
agents, many of them from documents obtained from court files
available on the Internet.

"The reality is this," said a spokesman for the site, who identified
himself as Anthony Capone. "Everybody has a choice in life about what
they want to do for a living. Nobody likes a tattletale."

Federal prosecutors are furious, and the Justice Department has begun
urging the federal courts to make fundamental changes in public
access to electronic court files by removing all plea agreements from
them -- whether involving cooperating witnesses or not.

"We are witnessing the rise of a new cottage industry engaged in
republishing court filings about cooperators on Web sites such as
www.whosarat.com for the clear purpose of witness intimidation,
retaliation and harassment," a Justice Department official wrote in a
December letter to the Judicial Conference of the United States, the
administrative and policy-making body of the federal court system.

"The posting of sensitive witness information," the letter continued,
"poses a grave risk of harm to cooperating witnesses and defendants."

In one case described in the letter, a witness in Philadelphia was
moved and the F.B.I. was asked to investigate after material from
whosarat.com was mailed to his neighbors and posted on utility poles
and cars in the area.

The federal court in Miami has provisionally adopted the department's
recommendation to remove plea agreements from electronic files, and
other courts are considering it and experimenting with alternative approaches.

Judge John R. Tunheim, a federal judge in Minneapolis and the
chairman of a Judicial Conference committee studying the issue,
acknowledged the gravity of the safety threat posed by the Web sites
but said it would be better addressed through case-by-case actions.

"We are getting a pretty significant push from the Justice Department
to take plea agreements off the electronic file entirely," Judge
Tunheim said. "But it is important to have our files accessible. I
really do not want to see a situation in which plea agreements are
routinely sealed or kept out of the electronic record."

Judge Tunheim said his committee was working on recommendations for a
nationwide approach to the issue. He said he favored putting the
details of a witness's cooperation into a separate document and
sealing only that document, or withholding it from the court file entirely.

For those who want to read the details on cooperating witnesses,
whosarat.com charges between $7.99 for a week and $89.99 for life.
The latter option comes with a free "Stop Snitching" T-shirt.

The site was started by Sean Bucci in 2004, after he was indicted in
federal court in Boston on marijuana charges based on information
from an informant. The site was initially modest and free, the
seeming product of a drug defendant's fit of pique.

Over time, it attracted thousands of postings, many backed by court documents.

Mr. Bucci was convicted in February and will be sentenced next month.
Stylianus Sinnis, a lawyer for Mr. Bucci, who is incarcerated, would
not say whether Mr. Bucci was still affiliated with the site.

Contacted by e-mail, Mr. Capone called a reporter at an arranged
time. He would not provide his phone number but insisted that his
name was authentic. He said Mr. Bucci was no longer associated with the site.

The site itself says it is "designed to assist attorneys and criminal
defendants with few resources."

Defense lawyers are, in fact, hungry for any information about the
nature of the case against their clients. "The more information out
there, the easier it is for the truth to come out at trial," said
David O. Markus, a criminal defense lawyer in Miami.

Lawyers and their investigators can, of course, check court files and
gather other material featured on the site themselves. But the site
makes it easier, cheaper and quicker to find information about
informants who may be involved in several cases in several
jurisdictions, the site's spokesman said.

Eliminating electronic access to plea agreements and related
documents would represent a real hardship, Mr. Markus said.

"It doesn't advance any of the stated safety goals, and it just
serves as a roadblock to the public's constitutional right to access
to their court," Mr. Markus said. "If there is an issue in a
particular case, then let's address it, but to sweep everything under
the rug isn't right."

The site says that it "does not promote or condone violence or
illegal activity against informants or law enforcement officers."

Frank O. Bowman, a former federal prosecutor who teaches law at the
University of Missouri, disputed that. "It's reprehensible and very
dangerous," Professor Bowman said of the site. "People are going to
die as a result of this."

Defendants who choose to go to trial will, of course, eventually
learn the identities of the witnesses who testify against them. But
the site also discloses the identities of people engaged in
undercover operations and those whose information is merely used to
build a case. The widespread dissemination of informants' identities,
moreover, may subject them to retribution from friends and associates
of the defendant.

Still, Professor Bowman, an authority on federal sentencing law, said
he would hate to see the routine sealing of plea agreements. "It
certainly is terribly important for the public ultimately to know
who's flipped," he said.

Professor Bowman added that he was studying the deals prosecutors
made in the aftermath of the collapse of Enron, the energy company.
"To do that effectively," he said, "I really need to know who flipped
and the nature of their plea agreements."

Judge William J. Zloch, the chief judge of the Federal District Court
in Miami, said the move to bar electronic access to plea agreements
there was supported by prosecutors and some defense lawyers. "It's
available to the public," he said of the documents. "It's just that
you have to go the courthouse."

Judge Zloch added that his court would discuss whether to make the
change permanent in the coming months.

The existence of the site raises a First Amendment issue for its
founder, Mr. Bucci. After his conviction, he filed a motion last
month seeking a new trial, saying the government's true purpose in
prosecuting him was to shut down the site because "he dared to assert
his First Amendment right" to post the information.

In a response filed Thursday, prosecutors conceded that "various
levels of government have long expressed concern that the Web site
endangers the lives of informants and undercover agents, and
compromises investigations." But they denied that the government's
dismay about the site influenced their decision to prosecute Mr. Bucci.

Most legal experts agreed that whosarat.com is protected by the First
Amendment. In 2004, a federal judge in Alabama refused to block a
similar site created by a criminal defendant, Leon Carmichael Sr.,
who has since been convicted of drug trafficking and money laundering.

"While the Web site certainly imposes discomfort on some
individuals," Judge Myron H. Thompson wrote, "it is not a serious
threat sufficient to warrant a prior restraint on Carmichael's speech
or an imposition on his constitutional right to investigate his case."

But Judge Thompson's ruling was not categorical. "A few differences
in Carmichael's site could have changed the court's calculus," he
wrote. And some law professors said that sites like whosarat.com
might be subject to prosecution for obstruction of justice or aiding
and abetting crimes.

In its December letter, from Michael A. Battle, then the director of
the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, the Justice
Department urged courts to put a statement on their Internet sites
"warning against the republishing or the other use of official court
records for illicit purposes such as witness intimidation." Judge
Tunheim said his Judicial Conference committee was awaiting legal
advice on that possibility.

For now at least, the Justice Department and the federal judiciary
appear to be focused on keeping information from the sites rather
than trying to stop the sites from publishing what they learn.

Government secrecy, said Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the
University of California, Los Angeles, "ends up being part of the
price you pay for having broad speech protection."