Monday, November 23, 2009

Oh, well done, sir!


Andrew Breitbart has scooped the entire mainstream media on his blog, 'Big Government'. He's caught ACORN red-handed dumping a mass of documents (possibly illegally) in what looks like an attempt to forestall an inquiry that would force them to hand over those documents to the authorities. As he points out:

On October 1st, 2009 California Attorney General Jerry Brown announced that an investigation had been opened into ACORN’s activities in California, resulting from undercover videos showing employees seemingly offering to assist the undercover film makers with human smuggling, child prostitution and even tax advice to boot.

Although ACORN has denied any wrongdoing, some of the employees involved were terminated, and ACORN has publicly stated that they would fully cooperate with any investigations that followed.

Interestingly, the local head ACORN organizer in California, David Lagstein was caught on tape earlier this month speaking to an East County Democratic Club.

Mr. Lagstein stated: “…the attorney general is a political animal, but certainly every bit of the communication we have had with them has suggested that the fault will be found with the people that did the video and not the people with ACORN.”

Continuing, Mr. Lagstein stated: “…we are fully cooperating, some of the investigators visited our office this morning and I think they really understand what’s going on.”

Shockingly, we now learn that the ACORN office in National City (San Diego County) engaged in a massive document dump on the evening of October 9th, containing thousands upon thousands of sensitive documents, just days prior to the Attorney General’s visit.

BigGovernment.com has learned that not only did this document dump occur, but the documents in question were irresponsibly and brazenly dumped in a public dumpster, without considering laws and regulations as to how sensitive information should be treated.

I am a local licensed private investigator. I took it upon myself to keep an eye on what the local ACORN office was up to, in light of the release of the undercover videos. I retrieved these documents from the public dumpster.

Documents shared with BigGovernment.com include information exposing not only the inner workings of ACORN in California, but also personal, sensitive information belonging to employees, members and clients of ACORN. ACORN and its few remaining defenders insist that the “good” ACORN provides outweighs the transgressions exposed in the recent undercover video sting. But, ACORN’s massive dumping of these documents and the cavalier manner in which it betrayed the trust of its supporters betrays that talking point.

ACORN’s political agenda is also exposed, with thousands upon thousands of documents revealing the depth of the political machine that is ACORN, and its disturbing ties to not only public employee labor unions but some of the most radical leftist organizations.

The laws governing how sensitive, personal information such as social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, immigration records, tax returns, etc. must be treated are very stringent, and thus it seems as if ACORN may have committed serious violations in that department alone, with thousands upon thousands of potential plaintiffs.


There's more at the link, including photographic and video evidence and samples of the documents. A scoop indeed!

Well done to Mr. Breitbart for pursuing this story, and exposing what's looking more and more (at least to this observer) like a massive criminal conspiracy. More power to you, Sir!

Peter

3 comments:

Old NFO said...

It will be interesting to see if anything is actually done with all that material...

Don said...

I figure the gubmint will dismiss this obvious evidence. Instead, they'll probably try to cite Breitbart for privacy violations or something. These days, they (i.e. the gubmint) are just making it up as they go along, the law be damned.

Anonymous said...

I do not think the government will be able to dismiss the document dumping. If for no other reason that by federal law, sensitive personal information must be destroyed once it is no longer being used. It may not simply be thrown in the trash.

Furthermore, ACORN did deal with government contracts (at least until its federal funding was yanked), and if any of the documents were created as part of those contracts, ACORN has to follow the same disposal rules for personal information under the Privacy Act as federal agencies. Which do not have exceptions. Civil servants (gubmint employees) have been fined for failing to follow the law in this area.

Archie