Doxxing? Actually, it’s about ethics in politics.
uproarious laughter
I am seriously shocked that it wasn’t a Republican doing it, whether to a Democrat or another Republican.
But yeah, that was completely and utterly wrong and needs to be investigated immediately.
Oh for f**k’s sake.
I didn’t read anywhere how the Democratic Party of Kentucky got the unredacted copy of the uniform citation. While the party should have known to crop or redact the sensitive information for the mailer, this seems like an issue that is sourced to the police or court from whom the party got the unredacted copy.
The linked article also references the fact that the Republican is blaming the Democrat for the mailer, even though the mailer specifically says that it wasn’t approved by a candidate. So the Republican is trying to turn it around for his own use, exactly as the Democratic Party is in their response.
Politics as usual from both sides.
Yeah, that surprised me, too, but sleaziness knows no political boundaries, really.
I’m really not comfortable with this approach. Yes, somebody fucked up giving the Democrats the unredacted info, but that doesn’t make the Democrats one bit less guilty for releasing it. Bell may not be directly responsible, but the Kentucky Democratic Party is; this was an official mailer, not some yahoo citizens’ group. And, with all that in mind, it’s pretty disgusting that the KDP is apparently refusing to accept any blame for fucking up. They had a chance to take back the moral high ground with a prompt and sincere apology, and instead they chose to continue racing to the bottom.
When you get caught fucking up, the correct response is not “Who cares? Somebody else fucked up too!”
In which we learn that, even if they seem to agree with us on some issues, politicians leave their souls at the door.
I’m not, speaking as a solid Democrat voter. The Ds are usually the lesser of two evils, but that doesn’t make them Dudley Do-Right.
Well now, let’s watch the Democrats shoot themselves in the foot. Stupid move and, as usual, an even more stupid rationalization. Proving once again that stupidity transcends political parties. Although, I have to admit that the Republicans have recently demonstrated stupidity which is orders of magnitude greater than Democrats.
If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide… right?
Is there evidence they thought about this when they sent it out?
On the face of it I would assume incompetence over malice because the release seems to have been a simple reproduction of a document which contained the information.
Rather than poor judgement in deciding to release irrelevant personal information it would be obliviousness in releasing irrelevant personal information.
But, you know, bad behavior either way and evidence of either careless stupidity or scary maliciousness.
Carl Malamud occasionally tweets about finding himself in this situation when he requests 1099 forms of nonprofits. Occasionally/often the IRS will send him copies of the 1099 of the nonprofit with the SSNs of the officers/executives of the nonprofits unredacted.
Nice letter he wrote to IRS oversight committee about this problem:
One easy solution to this is to not use SSNs for identification purposes. Why people use them, and demand them, and why they’re a pain to change is because they are used as a unique identifier when they really aren’t. And this is then used as a pretext to pressure people into participating in the Social Security program.
Typical Boing Boing cherry picking stories about Republicans using desperate, slimy tactics. Wait… what?
I went through the links and saw a lot of claims but no actual evidence. I would think the victim would post a copy of the mailer (with the sensitive information redacted) to make his case.
Okay, this is bad. But just as bad is the police department releasing unredacted police reports. Oh, and I’m still wondering why people divulge their SSN when arrested. Is that a requirement?
"By sending out his most sensitive personally identifiable information, the Kentucky Democrats have arguably become, at the very least, a player in whatever identity-related crime might be committed against Jobe in the future. " So now they are guilty of future-crimes? that someone else will commit? “arguably” - you got that part right.
The only one of these bits of information which borders upon “private” is the phone number. The other documents must be accessible through some other channels to be of any use. How could anyone confirm their SSN or driver’s license number if it couldn’t be checked somewhere? The house is probably on property records. I can appreciate that this sort of release can be inconvenient, but it doesn’t sound like anything really secret.
It is certainly not identity theft, as the article claims. Since there isn’t anybody else claiming to be Jobe.
