A privacy advocate who challenged a new Virginia law barring individuals from posting Social Security numbers on the Internet has won a partial victory in federal court.

U.S. District Judge Robert Payne ruled yesterday that the law is unconstitutional as applied to Hanover County resident B.J. Ostergren's Web site as it existed the date she filed the lawsuit.

However, Payne asked for additional briefs before deciding how the law might be applied to new information posted on the site.

Ostergren has posted government documents containing the Social Security numbers of prominent people and court officials to demonstrate that government has failed to protect individuals' privacy.

She alleged in her lawsuit that government can't publish the information and then punish citizens for distributing it.