By Anthony Gockowski
The Minnesota Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Board released the names and birthdays of more than 250 undercover police officers, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
“[I]n responding to a Minnesota Government Data Practices Act Request in 2024, the POST Board released the names and dates of birth of at least 257 Minnesota undercover police officers to, without limitation, the ‘Invisible Institute,’ a nonprofit organization based in Illinois,” says the lawsuit, filed by attorney Chris Madel on behalf of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association.
“Upon information and belief, this same private data was released to numerous media outlets in Minnesota,” it adds.
The Invisible Institute, the lawsuit says, inadvertently published the names of the officers as part of a public database it helped create that allows people to search officers’ employment history, according to a recent Star Tribune article touting the project. A “nationwide coalition” of attorneys and journalists assisted with the project, including independent journalist Tony Webster, the article says.
“The POST Board gave me the data in two spreadsheets, and the agency explicitly told me that they had removed undercover officers from the dataset. Some of the data was published online by a non-profit news organization,” Webster said in a statement published on his website this week.
“The POST Board has acknowledged this is entirely their error and their fault. Nevertheless, this incident is disturbing to me and I fully cooperated with the POST Board,” he added. “I dropped everything I was doing and worked diligently to get the data taken offline, and it has been taken offline. However, the data was distributed to news organizations, and it was downloadable by anyone. It is likely distributed beyond any assurance of effective recall.”
MPPOA’s lawsuit explains that the breach of confidentiality could put the officers at “significant risk of harm or retaliation from criminal organizations or individuals they are investigating.”
“Once exposed, the officer may no longer be able to work undercover effectively,” it says.
David Titus, MPPOA deputy director, said in a declaration submitted to the court that he “cannot understate the harm” that could come as a result of the disclosure.
“Upon becoming aware of the issue, the POST Board promptly notified the data requestor and other recipients of the data of the incident and requested the data be destroyed. The POST Board also promptly notified all affected officers and their Chief Law Enforcement Officers of the incident and the POST Board’s steps to stop any further dissemination of the data,” the POST Board said in a statement to Alpha News.
“There were approximately 49,000 officers listed in the response and the dataset did not directly reveal or indicate those officers’ statuses as undercover. The POST Board recognizes the sensitivity of this issue. POST has been and will continue to work diligently to address and resolve concerns in connection with this incident.”
This article originally appeared at Alpha News and was reprinted with permission.
