LegiStorm Went Too Far in Publishing Certain Congressional Staff Private Information

Susan Crabtree's TheHill.com April 2, 2008 article "Aides' private info exposed", reports some congressional staffers want legal action taken against the website called LegiStorm. LegiStorm has published some very private information of some of them including their signatures, kids' names, financial account numbers, etc. LegiStorm has attempted to make Congress more accountable by publishing the salaries, trips taken, and the personal financial disclosures of Congressional members and their staffs. Even though the company claims they have scrubbed certain information out of the disclosures they've published, I feel they've gone too far in their quest to make Congress more transparent.

Why LegiStorm Has Gone Too Far

I have no problem with LegiStorm making things like Congressional salaries and trips taken by the Congresspeople and their staffs public. We need to know if there are any potential or actual conflicts of interest and also just how much money specifically is involved here via salaries, any prior employment by Congressional staffers in lobbying firms, and the like. But when such things as the names of the children of these people, their personal financial information like social security, bank account, and investment account numbers are spread around further on the internet, it's a recipe for those government workers to be victimized. Sure, this information was already available because of the oversights and policies of such entities like the House Administration and House Clerk, which released this private information in the first place, without deleting such sensitive information like Social Security Numbers, the names of children, and financial account numbers. Even if that information has been released, why didn't the staff of LegiStorm delete that out when they were posting the information on Congress and its staffers in the first place?