Editorial: Open records, not open identity info

Newspapers are big fans of open records.

We want to be able to find out what our government and public entities are doing. What did they buy? What did they spend? Where did the money come from? Who did something wrong? How was it punished? How was it corrected? What were the consequences?

Open records are one of the richest treasure chests of facts, which makes them a favorite building block of detailed, provable, factual, data-driven stories. Watergate’s Deep Throat might have sent Bob Woodward on a quest to “follow the money,” but that’s really too narrow. It’s often more about following the numbers.

No one expects to find the kind of numbers the Tribune-Review discovered in a recent deep dive into the Allegheny County Civil Courts public website.

Hundreds of unredacted Social Security numbers were available.

It wasn’t a breach. It wasn’t that someone hacked the system to obtain them. It may not even have been that the county was aware that the numbers were included. But there they were.

On tax lien documents filed from 1997 to 2010 were scores of tax identification numbers, alongside names. Some were a business’s Employer Identification Number. Others were Social Security numbers, the nine-digit codes that can be the password to identity theft.

The Unified Justice System of Pennsylvania’s 2018 public records policy notes that it is the responsibility of the individual or attorney filing documents to ensure personal information is redacted. That’s a great policy for 2018 and going forward.

But in 1997, identity theft wasn’t quite the well-known enterprise it is today. LifeLock, arguably the best-known identity protection company, wasn’t established until 2005.

And LifeLock is a great example of what can happen when numbers are published. For many, the first time they heard of the company was during a splashy ad campaign in which then-CEO Todd Davis touted the strength of the service by putting up billboards and commercials with his actual Social Security number.

His identity was subsequently stolen at least 13 times. And that was with protection service in place and an awareness that his unprotected identification information was freely available.

According to Allegheny County Director of Court Records Michael McGeever, those concerned about their info are being told to petition the court for it to be removed.

“The department has no power to alter a court filing,” McGeever said.

Public information, however, is routinely weighed and measured as it is being dispersed in legally required open records requests, with government employees making judgment calls about what a reporter or citizen is allowed to see and what is withheld.

Records should be open. Social Security numbers should be protected.