The US Federal Election Commission (FEC) has a data privacy problem. Though making political campaign financial records publicly accessible enables independent review to counter corruption and foreign influences, providing anonymous online access to every financial campaign transaction contradicts authoritative government guidance regarding the protection of sensitive personal information and exposes supporters to physical and cyber attacks.
Examining the FEC campaign finance database reveals that the government interprets financial transparency as a broad mandate to make detailed personal information about all campaign contributions and disbursements anonymously available. While many may perceive personal data disclosure as acceptable because an individual’s name and address are generally viewed as public information, the data value increases extraordinarily when considered in the political context and warrants stronger privacy protections.
The government has established precedent to consider how data value changes when presented in different contexts. All federal agencies manage information flow using a labeling system that assigns standard classification levels to each piece of information. Much of the information that the government collects and maintains is considered Unclassified, meaning that disclosing the information will not damage national security. Though individual personal information generally falls into that category, the government recognized years ago that “personally identifiable information” (PII) warrants additional protections.
Widely considered the primary authority for defining government cybersecurity and privacy guidelines, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) established this definition for PII in 2010:
PII is “any information about an individual maintained by an agency, including (1) any information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual‘s identity, such as name, social security number, date and place of birth, mother‘s maiden name, or biometric records; and (2) any other information that is linked or linkable to an individual, such as medical, educational, financial, and employment information.
One example that NIST includes in that document addresses issues related to a fraud reporting application, a data context similar to that of the FEC database. The example argues that the disclosure of personal information in that context “would likely cause some of the individuals…to fear retribution,” leading to a “severe or catastrophic adverse effect” that warrants the highest levels of protection.
which if lost, personal information compromised, or disclosed without authorization, could result in substantial harm, embarrassment, inconvenience, or unfairness to an individual…requires stricter handling guidelines because of the increased risk to an individual if the data are compromised.”
Our government understands that the value of information will increase as the reporting context changes. The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) describes how the value of individual data items changes when new associations are made through compilation:
“Information that individually is unclassified or classified at a lower level, may become classified or classified at a higher level when aggregated or compiled in a single document, if the compiled information reveals an additional association or relationship that meets the standards for classification under the Order, and is not otherwise revealed in the individual data items.”
Those sources advance the premise that government agencies should determine the value of personal information it processes by assessing the potential harm to an individual against three criteria: 1) Linkage of identity to contextual information, 2) Potential for discovering new contextual information through compilation, and 3) Potential for individual harm from disclosure. Applied against the FEC campaign finance database.
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