There are two kinds of people in this world: those who will tell you your fly is open, and those who will laugh at you because your fly is open.
Yesterday, District 1 Board of Education candidate Matthew Molyett discovered a leak of his internal campaign data and materials. A local organization shared the data and materials with its members to solicit volunteers to assist the campaign. A bad-faith actor then created a fake Facebook profile and posted a link to the data and materials on the public Howard County Neighbors United Facebook group. Excrement, meet fan.
Several HCNU members, including founder Steven Keller, quickly accessed and downloaded copies of the data, which involved a list of potential contacts for the campaign. Mr. Keller posted screenshots of the data with names and notes circled in red as well as commentary as to who some of these folks are. Eventually, once someone pointed out that they were doxxing people, Mr. Keller deleted the post from HCNU, but the damage was already done. Several people had the data, including Mr. Keller, and he did not encourage people to delete it and avoid sharing it.
And not one of these people contacted Mr. Molyett to alert him to the leak.
What happened next is truly disheartening. Mr. Keller noted that he had deleted the original post, but he allowed others to post the data to HCNU with some information redacted. He also allowed others in HCNU to use this leak as an opportunity to mock Mr. Molyett and his campaign mercilessly. Local blogger Scott Ewart published a blog post regarding the leak in his own public Facebook group, Better Howard Together, and noted that he too had obtained a copy of the data. As with HCNU, the mocking that ensued in that comment thread was repugnant.
It was a mistake that this data was not protected. However, when one comes across unprotected, sensitive data, the honorable thing to do is to alert the data owner and to stay away from it. Dishonorable people intentionally access the data, share it, download copies for themselves, propagate false narratives and conclusions about the meaning of the data, and then mock the data owner and blame him for leaving it unprotected.
Dishonorable people laugh and mock and take advantage of another’s misfortune.