LegiStorm Makes Capitol Hill Staffers Mad: Who's Right?

The government Capitol Hill financial records have always been available upon written request from the public. Now, a firm called LegiStorm is making these records available to the public online. According to an article in the Washington Bureau Tribune, written by: Frank James, Capitol Hill staffers are now furious over their personal information being displayed on the internet.

In the past when a written request was received for a public record disclosure, sensitive information was deleted from the record to protect the staffer involved. When Capitol Hill sent the records to LegiStorm to be posted on the internet, all information was still visible. LegiStorm claims that it is not up to them to determine what Capitol Hill wants displayed on the internet and that their job is to post the material in the public records.

Capitol Hill staffers look at this information posting situation differently, and they feel that LegiStorm should be prosecuted for posting sensitive information despite the fact that this is the information that was available from Capitol Hill. LegiStorm has voluntarily spent its own money and time to remove what it thought that the most sensitive information might be, but this is not good enough for the angry staffers.

I am going to have to throw my vote onto the LegiStorm wagon in this debate. If information is available, then it is up to Capitol Hill to silence sensitive information from their records before it reaches the public; they can't be allowed to go pick and choose what happens to public information after they have sent it out of their offices. Although, let me make myself crystal clear: my heart sides with those injured staffers.

Apparently, some staffers had children's names, home addresses, bank account information for direct deposit of pay-checks, and everything required upon their government financial form documentation released onto the internet. The government system is outrageous for not being up-to-date on current sensitivity issues; but, that is how it is. The government released these sensitive employee records because it could.

In my opinion, if somebody at Capitol Hill had released these sensitive records while a system was in place making it a wrong to disclose this information, the staffers would be going after that department, and not LegiStorm who simply received the documents to post onto their internet site. When the public gets their tax information in the mail, nobody expects them to call the government for permission to it; LegiStorm used the information provided.

It is a very unhappy situation for the staffers who had their sensitive information disclosed to LegiStorm, but maybe this is a good thing happening in disguise. The Capitol Hill staffers are not the only people in America with social security numbers and home addresses that can be circulated; mine are all over my tax records and other government employee's still have that social security ID system in place in some areas.

The whole government information system needs a security review to make it safer for all of us to use. Yes, this will take money that we won't want to spend... But, we also do not want our sensitive information available to every Tom, Dick, and janitor employed with the government. LegiStorm is doing us all a great service by accidentally getting themselves into this messy situation that is hitting the media. Maybe the LegiStorm and staffer headaches will help to fix the system for all of us.