An anti-LGBTQ doctors’ organization left over 10,000 sensitive files unsecured online, exposing everything from a decade’s worth of emails to the group’s secretive membership list.
The files were discovered after a link on the website for the group, known as the American College of Pediatricians, led to an exposed Google Drive, as first reported by WIRED.
The data included the organization’s financial and tax records, social security numbers of board members, usernames and passwords for over 100 accounts, and details surrounding its effort to limit access to the abortion drug mifepristone.
One spreadsheet contained the list of its 1,200 members, alongside additional personal details.
The group, as described by WIRED, attempts to portray its “evangelical beliefs on parenting, sex, procreation, and gender” as being based in medical science.
Founded in 2002, the organization is known for its attempts to strip gay couples of their parental rights and campaigns aimed at convincing schools to carry literature painting transgender individuals as having a contagious pathological disorder.
“The leak, which had been indexed by Google, includes volumes of literature crafted specifically to influence relationships between practicing pediatricians, parents, and their children. It includes reams of marketing material the College aims to distribute widely among public school officials,” WIRED wrote “This includes pushing schools to adopt junk science painting transgender youth as carriers of a pathological disorder, one that’s capable of spontaneously causing others—à la the dancing plague—to adopt similar thoughts and behaviors.”
The organization is reported to have roughly 700 members as of mid-2022, comprised mostly of men over the age of 50. One member, a recent commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, asked to have his ties with group kept under wraps after joining, according to notes viewed by WIRED.
The leak is not the first to affect the organization.
More than 2,600 pages of communications made by South Dakota state Rep. Fred Deutsch (R) between 2019 and 2021 were also recently leaked online. The lawmaker, known for introducing anti-trans legislation, was found to be taking advice from a member of the American College of Pediatricians.
