Feds tell Portland blogger he crossed line
#1
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index...r_boj.html

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Excerpt: "Over the past nine years, blogger Jack Bogdanski has written some 15,000 posts. He criticizes Portland politicians, questions real estate deals and lately has been providing regular commentary on the Japan nuclear crisis.

After all that, the government has finally contacted him: This time, they suggested, he'd gone too far.

Federal authorities confirmed that they've launched an investigation into how detailed floor plans for a contentious U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement center in Portland ended up on Bogdanski's website, bojack.org. The center is to include holding cells for those suspected of criminal and administrative violations tied to customs or immigration laws.

Bogdanski removed the images last week after receiving a formal federal request which, in typical fashion, he blogged about.

"I don't know who they think has committed a crime," Bogdanski, a well-known law professor at Lewis & Clark College, said Friday. "I don't want to be portrayed as aiding and abetting terrorism, so I took it down."

Safety concerns prompted the Office of Inspector General for the General Services Administration to launch an investigation, said Chelsea Turnbull, a spokeswoman for the agency. She said the images are beyond those that were made public by the city of Portland and show proposed details whose disclosure could compromise employee and public safety.

"Because some of the people who move through that area are suspected of committing a crime," she said, "and we don't want them to have additional information about the facility."

The proposal has generated headlines for nearly a year because federal authorities want to move from a government-owned facility in the Pearl District to a privately owned building in South Waterfront. To do so, they not only must comply with city regulations but deal with neighborhood opposition.

Federal authorities had argued the facility was an office, but the Portland City Council in February sided with the South Portland Neighborhood Association and said it was more -- that planned holding cells should require a thorough public process in which issues such as safety could be addressed. A key hearing in that process is set for Wednesday.

Officials for the General Services Administration, the federal government's real estate arm, asked for the investigation after Bogdanski posted the floor plans on his website in January, Turnbull said. Less-detailed plans are public, she added, but the ones he posted "were acquired some other way because they have different secure parts of the facility."

A spokeswoman for the inspector general's office said law enforcement officers conduct investigations. But the findings will determine whether it's handled criminally, civilly, administratively or dropped altogether.

A spokesman for Portland's Bureau of Development Services said he didn't think any city planners had been contacted. He directed questions to city attorney Linda Meng, who didn't return a message seeking comment.

As for Bogdanski, he said someone emailed the renderings under an obvious pseudonym that he can't remember. But even if he did, the self-proclaimed "hobby blogger" said he wouldn't rat out the source.

Having said that, the feds are welcome to "look at anything they want to," he said. People send him stuff all the time, and he jots down the good leads on a yellow legal pad he keeps next to his computer in his attic office.

Bogdanski said he posted the renderings to educate the public about the proposal, which he thinks is a jail, because "that picture spoke 1,000 words."

He was willing to take it down because he'd proved his point.

"If this is not a jail," he added, "then why is the floor plan secret?"
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