Florida publishes Social Security numbers

Submitted by acohill on Tue, 04/11/2006 - 10:35

Broward County, in Florida (the Miami region), has been publishing all sorts of personal information on its citizens via the Web. They have been putting public documents online, but without redacting information like birth date and Social Security numbers.

Broward County officials maintain they have been following state law that requires them to put public documents online--but state they do not have the statutory authority to take personal information out of the documents. That will change a year from now, as the legislature has finally passed a law that requires local government to redact the information before publishing it online.

It is yet another example of clueless legislators--according to the article, local officials have been trying to get help with the problem for years. This demonstrates why education is at least as important as infrastructure when dealing with Knowledge Economy issues.