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Jeb Bush redacts tens of thousands of social security numbers after earlier email dump

Jeb Bush redacts tens of thousands of social security numbers after earlier email dump

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After an unintentionally aggressive document dump on Tuesday, Jeb Bush has been doing some last-minute cleanup. The Guardian is reporting that the former Florida governor's team has scrubbed the personal data of more than 12,000 people from its site in recent days, including social security numbers and medical IDs. The data was made public on Tuesday when Bush published more than 300,000 official emails from his time in office in the spirit of transparency. The Verge discovered a number of social security numbers within the emails, raising serious privacy concerns for anyone who had emailed the governor.

The emails were available before this week through public record requests, but Bush's public gesture drew new attention to the emails and the sensitive data within. Bush removed the raw PST files from his website on Tuesday in the wake of the privacy concerns, but copies of the file are still circulating, potentially raising identity theft concerns for the thousands of citizens involved. Lawyers have speculated that the failure to redact the numbers may have been violated state disclosure laws, although it's unlikely any charges will be pressed. The penalty would be a maximum $500 fine.