The City of Columbus, Ohio has been targeted by a ransomware group that hacked the city's servers. The hackers stole 3 terabytes of data, including private citizens' social security numbers, confidential police personnel files, and identities of police informants, in the largest ransomware attack in Ohio history. 

Mayor Andrew Ginther's response to the hacks was to blatantly lie to the public by telling them that private citizens were not impacted and that the data from the hack was corrupted. Common sense would dictate that lying would be a foolish effort because activists and journalists would work to confirm his story. 

One citizen, a cyber security expert, Connor Goodwolf, did just that.

Goodwolf discovered that the data from the breach was not corrupted and that dark web-published files did contain private citizens' data. The Mayor had lied, exposing the citizens of Columbus, Ohio to unnecessary harm. Goodwolf distributed the information to local journalists, who then corrected the record. 

In response to Goodwolf's brave whistleblower activities, City Attorney Zach Klein launched a vicious, retaliatory attack on Goodwolf, seeking an ex parte restraining order against the man who had shown the real facts to the people of Columbus, Ohio, silencing the whistleblower. The ex parte hearing meant Goodwolf was not present in the courtroom and could not defend himself. 

The reality is that anyone can download this data. Targeting a single whistleblower is nothing less than retaliatory, serves no functional purpose, and it's an assault on the First Amendment that miserably backfired.

Klein claims that his filing was meant to protect the city's data, protect police, informants, and private citizens, but in doing so he ignored the Streisand Effect. The Streisand Effect is a commonly known concept that causes information that is subject to suppression, via court proceedings, to become much more widely disseminated via reporting on the case. 

Once the restraining order was granted, media outlets all over the world began publishing about the existence of the ransomware attack and subsequent whistleblower retaliation against Goodwolf. Now, tens of millions of more people are aware of the existence of the ransomware data, exponentially compounding the risks faced by citizens and police. 

If Mayor Ginther had been honest from the start, there would have been no need for anyone to correct his statements. Connor Goodwolf has become the patsy, or what Klein referred to as "an example."

Klein is attempting to suggest that international hackers who are already committing massive organized cyber crimes will be deterred by punishing the whistleblower, or what is known as killing the messenger. 

Even Carl Lewis couldn't make those leaps in logic. 

Mayor Andrew Ginther's lies and Zach Klein's crooked, irresponsible, buffoonery in attempting to cover up the lies are atrocious violations of the public trust. Their idiocy and scrambling attempts to cover their own behinds have revealed a staggering level of incompetency from both the Mayor and Klein.

The City of Columbus has long had failing IT infrastructure, due to the very same poor management of the city that caused the ransomware attack, in the first place. This attack could have been prevented.

When the information was leaked on the dark web, revelations to the public could have been handled more effectively and honestly by city officials. Instead, the situation is far worse than it ever had to be.

I am imploring you to sign and share this petition, whether you live in Columbus or not because the city has no oversight agency. There is no way to hold officials accountable except for public exposure. 

When Columbus City Council established the Columbus Inspector General's Office, they only gave the organization authority to investigate the police, not themselves, Klein's office, or the Mayor.

We need to send a loud, powerful message to city leaders that lying to the public, targeting whistleblowers, and despicably failing the public is not OK. 

Klein's actions are particularly heinous because, in his mindless, ill-conceived plot to get revenge against a vocal opponent, now millions more potential hostile actors are downloading the data. His corrupt actions have made him a menacing danger to the public safety that his office is sworn to protect. 

Andrew Ginther and Zach Klien should put the citizens before their political aspirations and resign, to restore trust in city leadership.

How long will it be before hacked private data is found to have negligently caused a police officer or informant to be found dead, or a family to have their entire life savings stolen, as Klein continues on a relentless path to make absolutely sure every human being on Earth learns of the dark web leak by trying to suppress it?

Andrew Ginther and Zach Klein are dangerously corrupt and staggeringly incompetent. 

We must act now. 

Thank you,
Matthew Berdyck

Matthew Berdyck is a filmmaker, activist, journalist, source for New York Times, national news videographer and founder of data mining organization ToxicWasteSites.org, a federal toxic waste clean-up program transparency and data mining organization. His late father was an Ohio police officer.