California has allowed the Sacramento Bee to create a database where one can only search by an employee's name and get that person's exact salary, title, and job location. This is done for all State employees who make over $20K a year. This list includes law enforcement, corrections officers, tax collectors, and victims of domestic violence. These folks' names were normally excluded from public view due to safety. Now CA does not care about the safety of its employees.
There has already been one confirmed threat against a woman as a direct result of this database that has been up two days. (WEAVE) No one disputes that the salary ranges and positions are public information, but the public is not served by knowing that a particular person makes $32K a year. Since this database is only useful if you know a name, there can be no other purpose than for snoops and/or criminals. I am not a public figure- yet California has given away ALL expectation of privacy if you work for the State. What is next?
Basically, no one is safe from identity theft especially if our government is so willing to throw us under the bus in addition to a newspaper that so smugly calls this a public service. This is pure greed. Once we lose privacy, we never get it back. A typical Bee story gets 1-10 comments. This one is going on over 1000 and the Bee already removed the first 500 comments.
I am sure that recipients of public aid are the next to be "outted" so the good people of California can see who their tax dollars are going to.
