(MENAFN) The Government Publishing Office's inspector general has acknowledged in a report that the federal government inadvertently published the Social Security numbers of 1,900 people who visited the White House in December 2020 as part of the final report published by the Jan. 6 House select committee late last year. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) provided the select committee with White House visitor logs from December 2020 to January 2021, agreeing that birthdates and Social Security numbers would be removed. However, in December 2022, the select committee sent its final report and supporting materials to GPO for publishing through GovInfo, and on Jan. 4, 2023, a news outlet notified GPO that a supporting document in the report included the Social Security numbers of nearly 2,000 visitors.
Visitors to the White House are required to submit their Social Security numbers and birth dates to be screened by Secret Service in order to gain entry. In December 2020, many of the visitors who came to the White House were attending holiday parties hosted by Trump. The GPO inspector general said the "perfect storm" of several factors led to the disclosure of sensitive information of hundreds of White House visitors. The IG noted that the select committee had changed its request within two weeks of the publication deadline, which put a strain on the publishing office.
The "sheer volume of supporting materials" varied so much that the publishing office "does not always have an automated process to ingest, process, and publish to GovInfo," the inspector general's report said. It also found that the transition from the 117th to 118th Congress "caused confusion" and left the publishing office "without active committee oversight" in the period immediately after the release of the "personally identifiable" and sensitive information. The sensitive information was removed from the web, and there have been no reported cases of identity theft or fraud associated with the incident.
This report comes as Congress is dealing with another data breach. The hacking of the D.C. Health Benefit Exchange Authority data system has triggered at least three investigations and a federal civil lawsuit against the District of Columbia government, according to CBS News. At least 17 current or former members of Congress had personal information exposed in the hack, according to a top Democrat investigating the matter. It is unknown at this time if the two incidents are related.
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