Criminals serving prison time are using Freedom of Information laws to access the addresses of law-abiding citizens and receive other sensitive personal information, authorities concede.

• New York City's Board of Elections recently supplied a convicted murderer with the address of a former girlfriend whom he reportedly blames for his descent into crime and the killing of a friend.

• A Buffalo inmate, convicted of killing his girlfriend, filed a Freedom of Information request last year for copies of crime scene photos and a videotape of his dead victim -- possibly to post the photos in his cell or on the Internet.

• Law enforcement officials say New York State has one of the broadest Freedom of Information laws in the country and that it is ripe for abuse by prisoners.

• They also say that a series of recent court rulings have broadened what kind of information prisoners can request under the law -- making responding to the growing number of inmate requests increasingly burdensome for police departments and prosecutors.

Experts say state regulations require prisons to provide inmates with information on how to file a Freedom of Information request.

In 1994, the Michigan state legislature banned all prisoners from filing such requests after prisoners began asking for personal information on prison guards and site plans for prisons.