MSNBC anchorwoman Rachel Maddow pointed out that the president recently doxxed his own former campaign attorney, Joseph diGenova, by accidentally releasing his full birthdate and Social Security number in un-redacted government files detailing the investigation into the 1963 passing of President John F. Kennedy.
The doxxing led diGenova to receive frightening messages and worry about possibly becoming a target of identity theft and has led others to consider suing the administration for possibly violating privacy laws.
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A days-long stand-off at the US Institute for Peace included the DC Metropolitan Police. “You can’t just use guns to force your way in,” Maddow said.
The recently released JFK files were mostly of records that had been previously released by former presidents, Maddow noted, and offered no new insights into JFK’s demise or the investigation that followed. But the un-redacted files effectively revealed the social security numbers and birthdates of over 400 government workers and congressional committee members who assisted in the investigations into JFK’s passing, including diGenova.
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Many of the doxxed individuals are still alive and include a former assistant secretary of state, a former U.S. ambassador, intelligence agents, State Department employees, and prominent lawyers who still have high-profile careers, Maddow noted. Some have had to freeze their credit cards and bank accounts to avoid possible, The Daily Beast reported.
“It’s absolutely outrageous. It’s sloppy, unprofessional…. It’s like a first-grade, elementary-level rule of security to redact things like that,” diGenova told The Washington Post. He said he has not only become vulnerable to identity theft but also has had to report intimidating remarks made against him to the FBI, adding, “There are dangerous nuts out there.”
One of the other individuals doxxed in the release said, “It seems like the damage is done, but clearly we have to talk to some lawyers.” Others have contemplated suing the National Archives for publicly releasing their personal information as the doxxing may have violated the Privacy Act, a 1974 restricting the government’s collection and release of personal information.
Administration officials admitted to The New York Times that they only began looking through the files for sensitive personal information after the files had already been made public. In fact, the Times reported that administration officials knew, before releasing the documents, that they would expose some personal information.
Maddow noted that this was the most disturbing part of the issue, as no one in the president’s office mentioned to him that it might be a bad idea to dox 400 individuals in a file release that otherwise contained no new information.
“What? You’re gonna tell him that the genius brainfart he had about Kennedy… is somehow not the world’s greatest and well thought-out idea? … Who around him is [going to stop him? … That’s not how government works in an autocratic system.”
In an attempt to fix the problem, the administration has directed the Social Security Administration to issue new numbers to the people whose numbers were revealed.
Speaking directly to these individuals, Maddow said, “Good luck in your 70s and 80s now working with the hugely diminished and unbelievably chaotic Social Security Administration to restart, in your 70s and 80s, everything in your official and financial life with your brand new Social Security number that Trump is having to issue you to today, as an old person, as if you were a brand new baby.”
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