Kicking Big Brother in the Ankles

After my post about privacy yesterday, it’s nice to know that there are entrepreneurs out there who seek to make sure that our government—which generally has little problem with how private industry treats and shares our personal information—is as transparent as possible when it comes to its own information.  According to a story in the Washington Post, congressional staffers are outraged by a website, LegiStorm, which posts public information about the financial affairs of senior congressional staffers.

Under federal law, congressional staff members who earn more than $110,000 per year are required to file disclosure forms which list, among other things, their detailed financial holdings.  Why shouldn’t such staffers be subject to almost as much scrutiny as their bosses?  If they have the ear of some of the most powerful politicians in the world and serve as their handlers and gatekeepers, it only seems fair that the voters know if their financial interests may perhaps be influencing how their bosses vote on certain issues.  (Like issues involving privacy, for example.)  We sometimes forget that behind any politician is a group of people who write these influential laws.

And therein lies the irony:  Congress wrote these disclosure laws to help prevent public corruption and instill a sense of confidence in our public officials.  All staffers are obviously aware of them when they took their jobs.  So disclosure doesn’t seem to be the issue—it is the law, after all—but the dissemination that’s problematic.  Oh well, welcome to the internet age.  If congressional staffers really live in that much of a bubble where they think that they’re somehow exempt from close scrutiny in these politically polarizing times, then perhaps they’re as out of touch as some of the people they advise.

But the staffers have some legitimate concerns as well.  Some of the documents, which have since been redacted by the site, reportedly contained social security and bank account numbers.  Given the prevalence and ease of identity theft, this information obviously has to be removed prior to posting.  And if there is an instance of identity theft that can actually be traced back to the site (which is very unlikely), the site could conceivably be held liable.  There is such a thing as being too transparent.  While I may want to know if a staff member for a senator on the Finance Committee has large holdings in Fidelity, I don’t need to know the account numbers.  And we don’t want to dissuade smart, talented, and motivated people from joining the government if every conceivable detail of their financial lives is made public and widely disseminated.  Beyond these obvious concerns, however, sites like LegiStorm may help to keep Big Brother from getting too big . . . at least for a little while.

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