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Hundreds of Americans’ Social Security numbers were exposed when the Trump administration released a trove of largely unredacted files linked to the assassination of former President John F Kennedy.
The files, which so far haven’t included any surprises about the assassination, exposed the Social Security numbers — along with other personal information such as addresses and names — of some 400 congressional staffers and others, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
They included members of the 1975 Senate Church Committee and House Select Committee on Assassinations that investigated Kennedy’s killing.
The leaked numbers also belonged to a former assistant secretary of state, former U.S. ambassador, former Army officer, and former Donald Trump campaign lawyer Joseph diGenova, according to The Post.
Some of the numbers appeared in the records multiple times, noted the newspaper.
DiGenova was livid, calling the breach “absolutely outrageous . . . sloppy” and “unprofessional” in a statement to The Post.
He added: “It not only means identity theft, but I’ve had threats against me … there are dangerous nuts out there.”
“It “should not have happened,” diGenova told the Associated Press. “I think it’s the result of incompetent people doing the reviewing. The people who reviewed these documents did not do their job.”
Ironically, his breached personal information was on documents relating to his work for the Senate Select Committee that investigated abuses of power by government officials in the 1970s.
He told AP plans to sue the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration for violating privacy laws.
Social Security numbers can be used in identity theft to open bank accounts and apply for loans and credit cards in the holder’s name that can massively hike debt, especially if a crime syndicate uses a number in different locations before authorities are alerted to the thefts.
Many of the JFK assassination files that included Social Security numbers had previously been released — but with redactions. The Trump administration made the records public without the privacy protections.
Officials at the White House said Thursday a plan was in place to help those whose personal information was disclosed, including credit monitoring, the Associated Press reported. Officials also said new Social Security numbers will be issued to those affected, AP noted.
Trump talked about the records release to reporters on Monday, saying: “People have been waiting for decades for this. We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading. I don’t believe we’re going to redact anything.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Thursday that Trump “delivered on his promise of maximum transparency by fully releasing the files related to the assassination of President John F Kennedy,”
She also referred to the “proactive” steps now being taken to protect members of the public whose Social Security numbers were exposed.
The Trump administration published on the National Archives website more than 60,000 pages of documents related to Kennedy’s assassination on Tuesday, far short of the 80,000 Trump promised on Monday to make public.
Some experts have said that Trump released only a third of available records on the assassination.
The release of the information raises legal questions under the Privacy Act of 1974, experts noted to The Post.
“Social Security is literally the keys to the kingdom to everybody,” said Mary Ellen Callahan, former chief privacy officer at the Department of Homeland Security. “It’s absolutely a Privacy Act violation.”
Fears about leaks of Social Security numbers are at the heart of a pitched battle over Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency’s access to data at the Social Security Administration by a reportedly unvetted crew. One DOGE worker has been identified by Wired as a 19-year-old high school graduate who was booted from an internship after leaking company information to a rival firm, according to the publication.
A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked Musk and his DOGE crew from their “fishing expedition” in search of a “fraud epidemic” at the Social Security Administration based on “little more than suspicion.”
U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander issued a temporary restraining order preventing the world’s wealthiest man and his team from having “unfettered access” to data from the Social Security program, which Musk has baselessly slammed as a “Ponzi scheme,” and claimed without evidence that tens of millions of dead people are collecting benefits.
Handing over access to date would risk “exposing personal, confidential, sensitive, and private information that millions of Americans entrusted to their government,” the judge wrote in her ruling.
It was unclear, however, how much personal information Musk’s team may have already accessed.
