LegiStorm vs Washington staffers
p2pnet news | Politics:- The Center for Responsive Politics’ OpenSecrets.org has long been keeping an eye on the usual suspects in Washington, one of its functions being to index who receives what, how much and from whom.
Now political helpers are getting similar treatment.
And more.
“The House has worked itself up into hysteria over LegiStorm’s recent release of staffer personal financial disclosures,” says LegiStorm, launched in 2006. “There are demands in Congress for a taxpayer-financed lawsuit against us.”
Not only but also, “One House staffer has even gone so far as to suggest that LegiStorm aided and abetted in the burglary of his house.”
“In an unusual conflict over constitutional rights, the aides argue that the recent disclosures leave them highly vulnerable to identity theft,” says the Washington Post.
But LegiStorm says it has a First Amendment right to, “publish already public information about some of the Capitol’s most powerful players – the high-level staffers – and is creating a new check against potential corruption,” says the story, quoting LegiStorm president and founder Jock Friedly as saying:
“Congressional staffers are among the most powerful people in Washington, and in the past they have received very little scrutiny. It’s about time there was a little more scrutiny given to what they’re doing.”
Ever since it went online, LegiStorm has been running House and Senate salary and expenditure reports.
But in February it started posting staffers’ financial disclosure forms.
“Those documents, which must be filed by senior aides, contain explicit detail on aides’ finances – including bank accounts and investment portfolios – as well as some home addresses and signatures,” says the Washington Post, going on:
“The posts have enraged top House staffers whose personal finances are now on display for any Internet sleuth to access with a few clicks of a computer mouse. The move has not, however, generated many complaints from Senate aides.”
“Who knew it was going to get posted on the Web?” – it has one aide stating. And, “It’s shocking,” said A House Democratic chief of staff, “who requested anonymity to discuss her personal finances”.
“Now that anybody can look it up on the Web, I don’t know if I like it anymore,” she said.
Clerk of the House Lorraine C. Miller wrote to the more than 2,000 staff members warning them to check if they reveal any sensitive material, and, “that prompted Friedly to uncover more than 20 instances in which such private information was revealed on his Web site, for which he has apologized,” says the story, adding:
“The information since has been redacted from the site.
“However, Friedly refuses to remove staff home addresses or signatures unless the House pays the roughly $10,000 cost of altering thousands of the forms.”
Meanwhile, “Lawyers from the offices of the House Clerk, House General Counsel and ethics committee are trying to craft new forms that will help resolve the issue.”
Today, LegiStorm posts >>>
The public has spoken – and they appear to like what we are doing.
For several weeks we have been a bit beaten up. Congressional aides spoke of our site in sometimes vitriolic and, frankly, paranoid terms about how we invaded their privacy by publishing financial disclosures.
One staffer accused us of aiding the break-in of a home; others talked darkly about potential kidnappings and Russian gangsters. Many suggested lawsuits against us, at times for disclosing information that was already disclosed in the white pages delivered to homes and in Internet-searchable phone books. To be sure, there were some legitimate privacy issues raised but we have always believed the public right to know has trumped any privacy concerns that we have not already addressed.
When the story was a “local” one, confined to the congressional campus, we sensed the outrage about our publication of personal financial disclosures building to a level of hysteria – where the most absurd claims would be adopted as fact by an angry group of staffers. But the mood began to change dramatically yesterday when the Washington Post published a piece about how staffers were livid. NPR’s All Things Considered ran an interview with LegiStorm founder Jock Friedly and American Public Media’s Marketplace (also heard on many public radio stations nationwide) ran their own story. Salon and other publications joined in.
An encouraging thing happened: The broader public began to flood us with their private emails of encouragement. Dozens of others wrote complementary comments on our new blog. The Washington Times editorialized in favor of us.
We appreciate the support and we can assure you that we will continue to fight for all reasonable public disclosure measures while taking measures to protect staffer privacy where that does not damage the public’s right to konw [sic].
Stay tuned.
Washington Post – House Staffers Livid Over Web Site, April 9, 2008
LegiStorm – The public speaks out about LegiStorm, April 10, 2008
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April 11th, 2008 at 2:50 am
I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, most everyone should have some expectation of privacy, however they chose to take positions of great power over our government so we have some right to know who they are and what they do.
Oh well, if the information is in the public domain, there’s really nothing they can do about it.