[jrockway]

Locks are a terrible analogy for what's going on here. This would be like the government publishing a newsletter, and then writing a bunch of teachers' social security numbers on it in invisible ink. Someone then noticed that you can still read the invisible ink, and then wrote an article about how incompetently the government managed the data.

This is a simple case of an egotistical politician who wishes he was King tussling with the media that is rightfully making him look incompetent. "Anyone who disagrees with me is a criminal" is a common pattern for wannabe dictators. Vote against him at the next opportunity.

[SauciestGNU]

I'd say even invisible ink is taking the analogy too far. It's like the government published a newsletter, printed the PII on the back of the paper, and now wants to prosecute the first person to look at the back of the page.

[lkxijlewlf]

I commented below that I think it is like opening a CSV in notepad++ vs Excel. Same data, Excel just hides the commas. The commas are still there, though!

[jrockway]

Yeah, that's fair. Comments are a little bit like invisible ink; they look like they're not there because the rendering engine doesn't display them, but they're still sent with every copy of the information.

It would be better if the SSNs were white text on a white background and we were here because someone highlighted the text, though.

[hoppla]

The absence of locks is a good analogy. But I think a fruit welcome basket is a better one. Not only because they handed PII over to all visitors, but because the epilogue is fruity