Overinformed

I was reading an article online the other day about jury selection for The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump. It gave some basic data on the seven people selected by that point; things like occupation, employer, what part of New York they live in and where they were originally from.

"This is a bad idea," I said to myself.

Sure enough, today we learn that a juror has bowed out because people have managed to track them down, and they're afraid for their safety.

Data Privacy is about more than keeping just sensitive information safe. When I read the article, I was fairly sure that, even with the scant details listed, I could track down at least one of the people selected, because some of the information presented, when taken together, couldn't be more than a very small number of people, thus allowing for triangulation from public records.

And the article I read was fairly circumspect in what they published. I'm sure that others went into more detail, given that Judge Merchan has directed reporters to not publish physical descriptions of jurors (among other things). But as the public, there is no need to know any of it. I, as a member of the public, don't need to know where any of the jurors live or where they are from or what they do for a living or where they work or what they look like. None of that is germane to the case itself. It's effectively trivia, with no genuine relevance to the matter at hand. Institutions that deal with data have to recognize that.

The information was shared precisely because media outlets believed that it would garner public attention. Which was a reasonable expectation, given the number of people who have taken an interest in anyone associated with the various legal cases against the former President. An interest that could have been predicted to lead to doxxing, given the atmosphere around some of Mr. Trump's other legal entanglements.