LegiStorm Publicizes Congressional Staffer Info

Writer Leslie Carbone gives us a report that amuses and annoys at the same time. Apparently a gaggle of Congressional staffers are upset that their personal information has been released onto the Internet by government transparency advocate LegiStorm.

“Capitol Hill staffers are required to file financial disclosure forms,” say Leslie Carbone, “which contain sensitive information, including home addresses and signatures.”

When the info was released by LegiStorm, the staffers were incensed that their personal info was made public. For its part, LegiStorm says that it didn’t mean to put personal info on the net and promised to remove the staffer’s children’s names, bank accounts, etc.

But, the outrage aimed at LegiStorm is misplaced. Here’s how Carbone puts it:

The U.S. House of Representatives has released this information to the public.

Then LegiStorm, which promotes government transparency, published some of the sensitive information–provoking outrage by the staffers.

…And staffers shouldn’t have voluntarily included sensitive information on publicly available forms if they didn’t want the information to be available publicly.

But the finger-pointing at LegiStorm only highlights Congress’s aversion to accountability. Congress, not LegiStorm, is responsible for making the information public in the first place.

So, Congress gathers and releases the private information of Congressional staffers, but it is a watchdog group that gets the blame? Typical of government to blame everyone but itself.

Carbone makes a final good point. If the government was that cavalier with the personal info of their own staffers, what will they do with yours?

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