Earlier this afternoon, journalist Ken Klippenstein’s account was suspended by X. According to X’s Safety account, the temporary suspension was issued for “violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information, specifically Sen. [J.D.] Vance’s physical address and the majority of his social security number.”
Several news outlets that received a vetting dossier of the Republican vice presidential candidate, which had been leaked by hackers, chose not to publish the sensitive document due to its inclusion of personal information. Klippenstein, however, considered the dossier to be newsworthy and decided to publish it on Substack and his social media accounts, one of which subsequently deactivated his account.
Engadget reviewed the dossier and confirmed that the details mentioned by X’s Safety team were present and unredacted in Klippenstein’s copy, with the exception of the last four digits of Vance’s social security number.
Klippenstein justified his decision to publish Sen. Vance’s dossier on his Substack, noting that President Trump’s campaign had previously accused Iran’s government of hacking into its files and releasing the dossier in June. Klippenstein suggested that other news outlets refrained from publishing the document out of fear of conflicting with the U.S. government’s campaign against “foreign malign influence,” referring to the National Counterterrorism Center’s organization of the same name that aims to prevent interference in elections.
“I disagree,” Klippenstein stated. “The dossier has been offered to me and I’ve decided to publish it because it’s of keen public interest in an election season.”
The suspension of Klippenstein’s account also extends to the link to the dossier, which X has flagged. The platform now automatically blocks anyone attempting to post the link, issuing a warning that states, “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by X or our partners as being potentially harmful.”
X, previously known as Twitter, had updated its policy on “hacked materials” following the blocking of stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020. The policy now allows the sharing of stories about hacked materials but prohibits linking to the material if it was published by the hacker or someone working “in concert” with them.