Home addresses, phone numbers and places of employment
The White House on Thursday made public a trove of emails it received from voters offering comment on its Election Integrity Commission. The commission drew widespread criticism when it emerged into public view by asking for personal information, including addresses, partial social security numbers and party affiliation, on every voter in the country.
It further outraged voters by planning to post that information publicly.
Voters directed that outrage toward the Trump White House and the voter commission, often using profanity-laced language in the 112 pages of emails released this week.
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Unfortunately for these voters and others who wrote in, the Trump administration did not redact any of their personal information from the emails before releasing them to the public. In some cases, the emails contain not only names, but email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers and places of employment of people worried about such information being made available to the public.
The Washington Post is not publishing any of this information because in most cases it does not appear that the individuals were aware their comments would be shared by the White House. The emails were sent to the Election Integrity Commissions’ email address that the administration asked U.S. secretaries of state to send data files to.
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“These are public comments, similar to individuals appearing before commission to make comments and providing name before making comments,” said Marc Lotter, Press Secretary to Mike Pence, in an email. “The Commission’s Federal Register notice asking for public comments and its website make clear that information ‘including names and contact information’ sent to this email address may be released.”
The Federal Register notice soliciting comments was published on July 5. The White House page was published on July 13.
Approximately half of the emails published by the White House were dated prior to July 5.
That’ll teach them to complain.
Whether that information can be released—and whether commenters could or should have known it might be released—is there a legitimate reason for them to release it? It’s just to intimidate people, right?
It’s an administration chock full of malice and stupidity – it’s entirely possible they dumped the email list without redacting sensitive identification information without thinking. (Please don’t take that as any sort of defense: reckless, careless indifference isn’t particularly better than thoughtful malevolence.)
I’m usually one to give benefit of doubt and would, as a rule, assume no intent in cases such as this, but not with this administration.
Trump hates criticism. Trump hates opposition of any kind and will, as we are aware, strike back at his perceived enemies with disproportionately large force.
His attitude has rubbed off on the White House high-ups he brought in. They are all aware that Trump has a support base with a violent bent, so what’s to doubt when they release enough convenient information to identify some of his critics, but to do so with just enough plausible deniability to deflect legal blame if some of those identified are ‘visited’ by Trump fans?
If this wasn’t an act of spite then I’m a monkey’s aunt named Janet.
I wouldn’t by any means rule out the spitefulness theory – for that matter, calling it support for political terrorism isn’t beyond the pale. I’m just saying, this administration is capable of doing the same lousy stuff by accident as they may do with malice in a case like this. Not that practical results would differ.
@3. This is not the first time a government agency has received a large number of emails from citizens. Surely there are standard procedures in place for the confidential handling of personally identifying information?
Has there been a past incident of the release of so much personal information from solicited citizen emails?
And especially since it is not a “leak” or a “hack” but a planned release of bulk data, it seems completely deliberate.