On May 4th, I received a phone call from Deputy Secretary of State Lesley Mara. I had spoken with her back in February to receive a copy of the Secretary of State’s Office’s contact database. In February, her office quickly complied and since then, I’ve spent a bit of time analyzing the data.

Deputy Secretary Mara was calling to inform me that the data I had received back in February may have inadvertently included home address data of certain individuals whose home addresses are protected by a section of Connecticut law. In contacting me to inform me of the possible error, she offered to provide a new copy of the same database with certain home addresses redacted. Since I continue to research the data, I accepted the offer and am now using the new database.

In addition, I have told interested people that they can contact me directly to get a copy of the database. I am now making sure that people receive copies that have protected home addresses redacted.

Last Thursday, I finally received similar contact data from the Lieutenant Governor’s office. This data is not as carefully organized as the data from the Secretary of State’s office. It only has around five hundred records, and they come from various sources including ProVue, which is the same database that the Governor’s office uses, constituent files, and a handful of other sources. Many of the requests are about various agencies, and some are about legislation, both at the state and the national level. It does not appear to have any home addresses that required redaction.

I have also continued my discussions with the Governor’s office about obtaining information about her contacts. We have discussed omitting the home addresses to address the concern of various people’s privacy, as well as limiting the request to those related Government issues, such as comments about bills that the Governor might sign or veto. This is an ongoing process, but I hope to have additional data for analysis soon.

Today, I learned of an article in yesterday’s New Haven Register, Massive Bysiewicz database may violate law. It is another example of poor reporting on the topic. This ‘massive’ database is about half the size of a similar database that the Attorney General’s Office keeps, and about a quarter of the size of the Governor’s database. The database is not Bysiewicz’s database. It is a database of the Office of the Secretary of State and is used by various people in the office.

In addition, there is nothing about the database itself that violates the law. Instead, the failure to redact several hundred home addresses out of this ‘massive’ database is what may have been an inadvertent violation of Connecticut Statutes by members of the Secretary of the State’s Office.

Besides providing a misleading view of the nature of the database and issues around what is available via the Freedom of Information Act, it fails to provide context about other people involved. It mentions Geoffrey Fisher who filed a complaint against the Secretary of State and who claims that his request for information on the “Elegibility of Barack Obama to run for President of the USA” was not answered, without giving the Secretary of State’s office an opportunity to reply or noting the nature of the request.

Likewise, it uses unnamed sources to say “Other candidates have asked how anyone would know it existed.” Perhaps these other candidates are better off not having their names listed when it comes to not assuming that an office with many people contacting it would have a database to keep track of contacts.

At present, the only Democrat currently exploring a run against Ms. Bysiewicz for Attorney General is Former Democratic State Chair, George Jepsen. Mr. Jepsen is a bright, highly capable candidate for Attorney General. Yet he seems to be falling into the trap of focusing on the Secretary of State’s Office’s database instead of on issues of more importance to the Attorney General’s race. In a discussion on George Jepsen 2010 page on Facebook, he “Calls on Bysiewicz to Fix Privacy Leaks in Published State Database”. My comment upon Jepsen’s statement is included below.

It is important that government agencies use databases to provide the best possible service to the people of our state. The Governor’s office, the Lt. Governor’s office, the Attorney General’s office and the Secretary of State’s office are to be commended for their efforts to use technology to better organize their data. In addition, staff in each of these offices should be commended for their efforts to provide as much valuable data to reporters and other interested parties as possible while protecting people’s privacy.

Yes, there will be times when too little or too much information is made available, yet trying to make situations like this into large political issues serves no one well, not the newspapers, the politicians, nor the public.

My comment on the George Jepsen 2010 page on Facebook:

As a person who received a copy of the database in response to my Freedom of Information Request back in February and has shared this data with a limited number of people, I believe that this statement, as well as the article by Mary O'Leary is at best misleading.

The data that was provided to myself and other reporters was not provided by Ms. Bysiewicz. It was provided by the staff of the Secretary of States office in a proper effort to meet Freedom of Information Act Requirements. A section of Connecticut law concerning a small number of individuals may have been inadvertently overlooked. When the staff became aware of this, they contacted people who have received the data to rectify the situation. I was contacted by Deputy Secretary of State Leslie Mara concerning this on May 4th.

I have told people that wish to receive copies of the database that they can contact me directly and I will make it available to them. A few people have asked for copies and since the problem with the original data was noticed, I have been making the corrected data available. Beyond that, I do not know of this data being made available online, but if people know of it, I would be very interested in hearing where it can be retrieved.

It is important that we elect a strong new Attorney General. I have been a long term fan of George Jepsen, and believe he would make a great Attorney General. However, I don't believe that statements like this are in the best interest of Mr. Jepsen, or the people of Connecticut as we attempt to select our next Attorney General.