24 March 2006 - 5:28pm
In another instance of phone numbers on the internet...
We have all heard about the horror that certain people feel when their phone numbers are leaked online--I'm pretty sure everyone remembers when Paris Hilton's cell was hacked and the numbers of hundreds of celebrities were suddenly available to everyone on the internet.
Well...it has happened again. This time, it's not your typical celebrity--but someone who maybe should be getting more attention on a national level than he is.
Bill Napoli, the South Dakota Republican who has attracted much criticism for his views on what constitutes rape, was a strong supporter of the South Dakota bill that banned abortions within the state.
Now his phone numbers have been leaked online in the form of a cartoon--although, in all fairness, anyone who was previously interested in his car museum would have been able to find contact information on the web already.
Upon receiving a copy of the cartoon in my e-mail inbox, I thought very little of it--until I got bored enough to actually call the listed numbers. Leaking information on the internet brings up very interesting questions regarding privacy and its respective place within politics, but it also shows that the information age has made room for people to contact politicians in ways that may have never been possible before.
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Comments
Think about the wild times when our IRS files are put up for sale and end up on the web. Could be interesting reading.
I agree completely with your concerns about the private information of private citizens being made available online without proper permissions. However I would like to point out that in the specific case of Bill Napoli all the contact information released in the cartoon, and more, has been publicly posted by the State of South Dakota on the legislator contact page, available through the following URL, http://legis.state.sd.us/
I assume that Senator Napoli was not only aware of this publication but agreed to it before hand. Here's the link to his contact information as released by the South Dakota Legislature. A quick examination of the website will reveal it contains contact information on all of the South Dakota Legislators.
I think in this specific case the cartoonist wasn't out of bounds, due to the state's prior release of the information.