[Infowarrior] - Hill staff rages as LegiStorm gets personal

[Richard Forno]

Hill staff rages as LegiStorm gets personal
By: Katie Glueck
April 4, 2013 05:22 PM EDT
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=93F695CC-5215-483C-8501-C2D9B346DE79

The Congress-focused research organization LegiStorm set off a firestorm on Capitol Hill this week as some staffers learned that their personal Twitter accounts would appear on the site.

LegiStorm on Wednesday publicized the tool StormFeed, a “real-time, full-text searchable access to every official press release and official tweet from Capitol Hill plus the tweets of thousands of congressional staffers,” according to a release. It’s a page available for members of the subscription service LegiStorm Pro.

As staffers learned about StormFeed, some discovered other detailed, personal information listed on the site.

“Many are finding inaccurate information in their profiles, despite [Legistorm’s] promise that info provided is ‘confirmed,’” one House Republican staffer told POLITICO in an email on Friday. “I was pretty surprised to show that they even listed who I married, when I married him and where. Why in the world does that need to be in there?”

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A Democratic staffer said the new feature brings an unwelcome level of scrutiny to a group of people who haven’t sought the spotlight.

“Working on the Hill is an enormous privilege, and for that staffers … are willing to make lot of sacrifices, including long hours, job uncertainty every two years and an understanding of the public disclosure regarding salary information. But unlike members, staffers have not signed up for the public eye in their own personal lives off hours,” the House Democratic chief of staff said. “This action by LegiStorm does nothing to provide greater transparency on Congress. Instead, it is another action — like the sequester cuts — that causes good staffers to wonder if all the sacrifices are worth it.”

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Another House Republican staffer also thought the newest tool went too far.

“I think there’s an expectation as an employee of a public official your actions are watched. That’s true online and offline,” the GOP aide told POLITICO. “But I think the new feature raises a larger question within personal privacy. Staffers aren’t elected officials. Where is that line with regard to personal privacy?”

LegiStorm President and founder Jock Friedly said that while LegiStorm has heard from “quite a few staffers” since the launch of StormFeed, there aren’t plans to alter the information provided on the subscriber site.

“Of course they’re private citizens,” he said of the Hill aides. “But with that being said, forever, as long as information has been published, people want to know — in the airline industry, people want to know who’s making executive decisions in airline companies…it’s true that congressional staffers, I think, have an underappreciated role in making public policy, and therefore deserve extra scrutiny, but this really has nothing — [there’s a] general business about providing information about who is who in a particular industry, it’s not unique to Congress.”

He said the company has so far received only three complaints that the site linked to the wrong Twitter account, and one of those complaints was inaccurate. “It’s possible more might emerge but there’s been PLENTY of water cooler gossip about this on the Hill and I think we would have heard more specific responses if lots of people had legitimate grievances,” he told POLITICO in a Friday e-mail.

LegiStorm editor Garrett Snedeker said on Thursday that the service has long compiled all kinds of data, including travel and finances, about staffers and members of Congress.

“Probably the biggest thing I’d like to stress is LegiStorm publishes no type of biographical information that hasn’t been part of the standard biographical profile for many decades,” Snedeker told POLITICO. “We gather that, integrate that, try to make sense of it just because the proliferation of so much information, so much data really necessitates a website like LegiStorm to make sense of it all.”

One of the GOP aides who emailed on Friday pushed back on the notion that all of that information should be available in the first place.

“I was also surprised to see that my personal Twitter account and avatar is what’s being used at the top of their screen captured image of what [LegiStorm] looks like,” the staffer continued. “Seems pretty invasive to me. I understand why our salaries are public. They should be. But I don’t understand why the rest of this info needs to be displayed like this. Where I got married isn’t just anyone’s business.”

Snedeker said the Twitter change caused some Hill staffers to realize that additional social media information about them already had been on the site for some time, including links to their personal Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest accounts where available.

“It’s pretty awful that this information is not completely accurate,” said another Republican staffer, who has notified LegiStorm that the individual’s profile page has inaccurate social media links, and is waiting for a response. “I’d hate for myself to be interviewed for a job right now — what if they had linked my account to someone with the same name as me that had completely differing views, or their Twitter account…had links to political stories on the opposite end of the spectrum? I’m not saying it’s an end to a career. I’m just saying it  could potentially affect how people who use LegiStorm view you. I’m sure they’ll correct it.”

The staffer also noted that sometimes, profiles list children who are still minors — something Friedly acknowledged happens but said LegiStorm is quick to correct.

Snedeker said the “biggest thing” he wants users to know about StormFeed is LegiStorm’s commitment to privacy. “We a hundred percent respect privacy concerns,” he said. “That’s why if your Twitter account goes dormant or you protect your tweets, you’re not [going to be] on StormFeed anymore.”

He also sought to downplay the Facebook element.

“We respect people’s privacy in the sense that we’re not going to come banging down the door to find out what your Facebook is,” Snedeker said. “We, frankly, have plenty of other things to do. But if it’s readily available, and the information listed on Facebook is verifiable, and we can confirm that, we’re going to add it.”

One Republican Senate aide challenged the overall level of data LegiStorm provides about staffers, saying including religion on some profiles is too much.

“Transparency is one thing; listing sensitive and private information is entirely different,” the staffer told POLITICO. “Our salaries are a matter of public record — but why should anyone need to know our religion? That’s over the line.”

Alex Byers contributed to this report.


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