This is a straw man. There is no reason they would need ‘literally all’ of Propublica’s data. We don’t know how many data points were verified, but it need not be many.
>In every instance we were able to check — involving tax filings by more than 50 separate people — the details provided to ProPublica matched the information from other sources.
So we know it was at least 50 data points and not all of them were public. It was likely many hundreds of data points since it would be trivial to check more than one number if you already had 2 copies of a tax return pulled up.
If we take ProPublica's words to be accurate, then how would a state actor know exactly which 50 individuals ProPublica would have access to given that they would have a vast network of contacts and can and did ask the individuals involved to review the information they received and point out any inaccuracies.
Either these are real tax returns, ProPublica is lying or the state actor has a crystal ball.
Still a straw man - how many of these 50 were public? It’s only the private ones that matter.
> It was likely many hundreds of data points since it would be trivial to check more than one number if you already had 2 copies of a tax return pulled up.
How is this relevant? Multiple points from public sources don’t show anything.
The only thing that matters is the number of sources who are both independent and private.
All an attacker would need to do is have access to a few of these private records and they could make their leak look genuine.
