Capitol Hill staffers are required to file financial disclosure forms, which contain sensitive information, including home addresses and signatures.
According to LegiStorm, the company involved in the dispute, some staffers included information that is not required, such as children's names and investment account numbers.
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.
That's right: House staffers are whining that LegiStorm has published information made public by the House.
In response to the outcry, LegiStorm has said that it would re-post redacted records if the taxpayers pick up the costs of blacking out the sensitive information.
For its part, the House Ethics Committee has announced that it will change the disclosure forms to withhold home addresses and signatures from the public.
Of course, that's what it should have done in the first place. 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.
And if Congress is that irresponsible with staffers' personal information, what do you think it will do with yours?
Source: By Leslie Carbon
