Regular Freedom@Work readers may remember the Foundation's recent identity theft case in North Carolina [1], where Communication Workers of America union bosses posted nonunion AT&T employees' social security numbers on a public bulletin board. Not only was this an open invitation to fraud and identity theft, it also violated North Carolina's newly-enacted Identity Theft Protection Act. Foundation attorneys have slammed CWA bosses in state court, seeking damages for affected AT&T employees.

The union lawyers' response, however, can only be described as absurd. Instead of working to ensure other workers' confidential information is kept safe, CWA union operatives filed a counter-suit, alleging that the very act of removing workers' social security numbers from the bulletin board and warning other workers that their confidential information had been made readily available at a public location itself violated the Identity Theft Protection Act. Naturally, the court dismissed the union's frivolous claims and will now resolve the Foundation's original lawsuit. The text of the decision is available here [2] (.pdf). You can also watch the Foundation's video on union identity theft in North Carolina: