The Presidential Advisory Commission on Elections Integrity, co-chaired by Mike Pence and Kris Kobach, wasted no time last week putting Americans on notice regarding exactly how it intends to exercise its mandate to defend our elections against those who might dare to vote in them.
In the new commission’s first public action, on Thursday July 13, Pence and Kobach ostentatiously launched a campaign of citizen intimidation by publishing on the White House web site thousands of emails from concerned citizens exercising their 1st Amendment right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” (in a tsunami of outraged emails first triggered by this earlier Daily Kos diary).
There’s certainly nothing wrong, in and of itself, with publishing such citizen petitions. Indeed it might well be argued to be a commendable exercise in transparency, especially considering the brutally blunt nature of some of those comments (outlined in Jen Hayden’s excellent diary on Friday).
But in yet another rejection of human decency by the Trump administration, the commission has recklessly endangered hundreds of these petitioners by failing to redact sensitive personally identifiable information from those comments, including email addresses, phone numbers and even home addresses (the image at the top of this article — redacted here — illustrates just one of many examples).
In today’s superheated political climate, increasingly riven by Trump Militia violence against peaceful demonstrators, online harassment by the alt-white against its opponents, the NRA’s call for armed rebellion, and gun-packing idiots shooting themselves — and perhaps soon others — at demonstrations, the Pence-Kobach commission’s irresponsible doxxing of concerned citizens feels perilously close to criminal, at least according to legal experts I’ve been discussing this with. Just how close may end up being decided in a court of law if — God forbid — someone gets hurt due to the commission’s gross negligence. Or perhaps even sooner, if an organization such as the ACLU chooses to defend these citizens’ right to exercise their First Amendment petition rights without fear of retribution or intimidation.
It doesn’t require particularly acute hearing to detect in this event the echoes of candidate Trump’s past exhortations to his followers to assault reporters and protesters. And equally obvious is (or should be) the clearly chilling effect that the commission’s actions may well have on American citizens’ free exercise of their constitutional rights.
Not an accident: The white house intentionalLy Doxxed These Citizen-petitioners
As I write (on Saturday, July 15), these innocent citizens’ personally identifiable information has been available on the White House web site for two days now. Is this just an oversight that we may hope to see corrected soon? All indications suggest that the answer to that question is ‘no.’
On its White House blog page, dated July 13, the commission for the first time publicly invited citizens to submit comments at ElectionIntegrityStaff@ovp.eop.gov, along with a disclaimer:
Please note that the Commission may post such written comments publicly on our website, including names and contact information that are submitted.
As it turns out, such ‘contact information’ has included not merely the commenter’s email address, but even a phone number, street address, and apartment number (see screengrab, above, for example).
Pence and Kobach don’t yet seem to fully appreciate just how badly they’ve stepped in it here.
First, the commission’s initial public dump of emails, on July 13, included citizen communications received by the commission between June 29 and July 12 — days before the commission published its public disclaimer.
Thus Rosalie (seen in the screen grab at top), like thousands of others, petitioned her government for redress of grievances without benefit of Pence and Kobach’s untimely warning regarding their intention to dox her.
But with or without a public disclaimer, these doxxed citizen-petitioners had every reasonable expectation that the White House would redact their personally identifiable information before releasing their comments — because that’s a near-universal federal government requirement in compliance with the Privacy Act of 1974 which, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, requires that
Federal officials handling personal information are “bound by the Privacy Act not to disclose any personal information and to take certain precautions to keep personal information confidential.”
The White House should fervently pray (as should we all) that Rosalie is not under the protection of a domestic violence order (as but one example of why the commission’s action this week was so wantonly negligent).
I should add here that I am not an attorney, and I’m not offering legal advice. Attorneys whom I’ve discussed this matter with point out that there is some complex case law surrounding the question of whether or not an advisory body such as the Pence-Kobach Commission is subject to Privacy Act requirements. But they also point out that the White House itself (which released this personal information on its web site) and the Vice President, who chairs the commission, certainly are subject to Privacy Act restrictions.
If you’ve been doxxed by the White House (and my long evening spent examining the entire data dump confirms that some DKos members have been), you might wish to seek the advice of an attorney to explore what remedies might be available to you under either the Privacy Act or the Federal Tort Claims Act. And in an entirely separate line of attack, you might also wish to contact the ACLU to explore its possible interest in including you as a plaintiff in a First Amendment lawsuit seeking to bar the Pence-Kobach Commission from publishing the personally identifiable information of citizen-petitioners.
And if you are the target of harassment or intimidation resulting from your communication with the Pence-Kobach Commission (and I pray you aren’t), the good folks at Insightus would welcome hearing about it: admin[at]insight-us[dot]org.
As for other readers — who have not been doxxed, and who therefore probably lack standing to bring suit — please consider backing up our brothers and sisters by joining the movement to impose adult supervision on the now dangerously out-of-control Kobach Commission.