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Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

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Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#171

Post by anigbrowl »

wyldfire wrote: post #54
arianvanp wrote: post #23

So you think it is okay to model ethnicity and religion of 200 milion citizens? This is how my country got all their jews killed in WWII [0]. The mere thought of compiling such information here would lead to some hefty jail time these days. I really cannot believe you can even defend such a thing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_registration#Netherlands

Whoa! We got to Godwin super fast this time. Please re-read what I wrote and consider that I might have the best intentions to explore a discussion with HN. Note also that I discussed the nature of securing the data and not its compilation. Note that IMO several European countries forfeit some freedoms that I consider valuable and critical for democracy. IMO it is your right to observe the world as it is and note wha…

Don't try to negate his point with a Godwin flag. This is not about you or your posting intentions; it's a fact that data like this can and has been used for precisely such purposes in many instances.

Yeah yeah, that'snot what you are about, but citing your own comfy idealism to avoid dealing with unpleasant realities is exactly the mechanism that political bad actors seek to exploit.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#173

Post by anigbrowl »

smt88 wrote: post #80
arianvanp wrote: post #23

So you think it is okay to model ethnicity and religion of 200 milion citizens? This is how my country got all their jews killed in WWII [0]. The mere thought of compiling such information here would lead to some hefty jail time these days. I really cannot believe you can even defend such a thing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_registration#Netherlands

In the US, Nazis can march through Washington, and police will spend time and money protecting them. They'll do this for any group with any ideology. Needless to say, our countries have different ideas about which freedoms can and cannot be sacrified. Using public data to guess at someone's race isn't, out of context, illegal. It is in some situations, but not this one.

Yeah, and that's a Bad Thing. Turns out our institutions do not magically immunize the USA from authoritarian ideologies or operations, which is rather worrisome because if the USA were devolve from democracy to dictatorship then there's no other country that's going to ride to the rescue, so the likely outcome would be an extremely unpleasant civil war.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#174

Post by nostrademons »

falcolas wrote: post #157
nostrademons wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really disagree that this is a shitty data breach, but on the consequences, I'll point out that the 5% of society who tends to sociopathy already have much lower-effort means to target minorities: Hate women? Look for boobs. Hate muslims? Look for brown skin. Hate Republicans? Look for MAGA hats. That these are inaccurate signals is irrelevant: haters gonna hate, and I really don't think they care whether the…

> lower-effort means to target minorities It doesn't get much lower effort than downloading a list, popping it into Excel, and sorting on a column (I'm willing to bet that some hate groups are already doing this and will release very specific lists to their membership). And with phone numbers and a couple of bucks, you don't even have to leave your house to send them hate messages by the thousands. Haters gonna hate…

It gets a lot lower effort than downloading a list, popping it into Excel, and sorting on a column (really, how many non-techies would do that?). Get on the subway, find girls with brown skin, start screaming obscenities, pull knife when confronted, murder.

Look, I don't want to minimize the impact of hate or harassment on victims. It really is terrible, and should be challenged whenever possible. I do want to inject some realism into the discussion of the likely consequences of this breach. The people who would go out and harm other people because of their ethnicity or religion don't particularly care if they get the ethnicity or religion right. (I'm reminded of a time when I was carrying my wife's purse while she went shopping in a nearby store, I walk by a pickup truck, and the guy inside is loudly muttering "Fucking faggots" over and over again. And then I met my wife in the parking lot, give her a kiss, hand her back her handbag, and he laughs a big "Ha-ha!" of relief and drives off.)

And the people who would do mass harassment over the phone have much easier ways to get this data, like e-mailing their state voter registry and asking for it.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#175

Post by nostrademons »

anigbrowl wrote: post #169
nostrademons wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really disagree that this is a shitty data breach, but on the consequences, I'll point out that the 5% of society who tends to sociopathy already have much lower-effort means to target minorities: Hate women? Look for boobs. Hate muslims? Look for brown skin. Hate Republicans? Look for MAGA hats. That these are inaccurate signals is irrelevant: haters gonna hate, and I really don't think they care whether the…

Why do you assume sociopaths just want to pick on individuals? There are ambitious sociopaths that draw up plans for things like ethnic cleansing, genocide and so forth. We have abundant examples of such behavior within recent history. I think your concept of sociopathy qua serial killer is uninformed and stereotypical. Most sociopaths are not stabby weirdos blinded by hatred, they're just self-centred people with di…

I don't assume that sociopaths just want to pick on individuals. I assume that the ambitious sociopaths drawing up plans for ethnic cleansing are the people who compiled this database in the first place.

Someone with the resources to perform ethnic cleansing could easily pony up the few thousand dollars that is required to buy this data in the first place:

http://aristotle.com/voterlists/

http://nationbuilder.com/voterfile

http://www.l2political.com/products/data/

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#176

Post by criley2 »

strictnein wrote: post #56
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #47

As long as the CEO of an company (RNC) that gives data to an outsourcer (Deep Root Analytics) is not going to jail to give data to an unqualified company, nothing will change. If the CEO goes to jail, things will change very rapidly (CEO will manage his CMO much tighter who will first want to see an security audit not older than 6 months). At least CEOs I have reported to as CTO were very sensitive for implemention i…

What law did they break, exactly? These aren't medical or financial records. A careless programmer makes a bad choice and the CEO has to go to jail? Come on.

>?A careless programmer makes a bad choice and the CEO has to go to jail? Come on

An institutional failure of review, testing and security that will lead to tens of billions of dollars of identity theft goes unpunished completely?

Come on.

A CEO is responsible for his organization. If you ruin lives, you have to pay the price.

Can't handle the heat?

Don't take the job.

I hate how CEO's get hundred million dollar parachutes because, the risk and danger and difficulty of such a position warrants such extravagant pay.

But, then, we ask them to be responsible, bear responsibility for the organization which paid them a hundred million dollars to be responsible,and we say "come on?"

Utterly ridiculous.

CEO's bear responsibility for their organizations, or the organization should not exist. There must be responsibility for private organizations, lest the concept of private organization be nothing more than a cheap trick to remove criminal and civil liability from wrong doing.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#177

Post by LinuxBender »

remline wrote: post #75
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #47

As long as the CEO of an company (RNC) that gives data to an outsourcer (Deep Root Analytics) is not going to jail to give data to an unqualified company, nothing will change. If the CEO goes to jail, things will change very rapidly (CEO will manage his CMO much tighter who will first want to see an security audit not older than 6 months). At least CEOs I have reported to as CTO were very sensitive for implemention i…

If this data has private information on non-republicans then jail them for having it, not for leaking it. There is no special purpose in these two groups of colluding Americans that grants them special rights to gather data on their non-associates any differently than any other member of the public.

Doesn't it have religious pref, ethnicity and much more?

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#178

Post by johnmarcus »

anigbrowl wrote: post #158
ksk wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can't blame a "careless programmer" when the real problem is organizations simply not committing any resources to security. How have you established that they didn't have a sufficient number of experts? What if they purchased a product or service and it simply didn't work? Its rather harsh to point fingers without having all of the information. >We'll keep seeing things like this until our laws are such that ste…

I'm really impressed at the lengths people will go to defend those whose malfeasance or ineptitude unarguably worsen the lives of up to two hundred million people . You seem like a smart person, please tell me how you think it's OK that these folks' contact details and potentially very detailed psychological and political profile information are now likely available on the dark web? Given that this data was collected…

Well, for one, you can legally obtain much more detailed information on a person from any background check application currently available. So, it's arguable this has really increased the likelihood of a future crime.

"In criminal law, strict liability is liability for which mens rea (Latin for "guilty mind") does not have to be proven in relation to one or more elements comprising the actus reus (Latin for "guilty act") although intention, recklessness or knowledge may be required in relation to other elements of the offense."

Proving recklessness is harder than you think.

If data is leak because someone within a company with the appropriate level of access decides to sell out to the dark web, all the security in the world won't protect you. Should the CEO go to jail because an employee turned on the company?

Heartbleed - you could have had 100 security professional on your team, and you still would have been vulnerable. Should every CEO on the planet go to jail?

Security persons do make mistakes and leave keys in places they shouldn't, genuinely by accident. Whom is going to jail for this error? If you think you are sending the security personel to jail, well, we're going to have an exodus of people willing to call themselves security personel, because no one is paid enough to risk jail for a job.

So, it's not a matter of defending ineptitude, it's a matter of recognizing the problem is complex and unless you can have clear boundries of what is punishible and what is not, your going to have a bad time enforcing anything that makes a difference. As a security person, I'm sure you know a policy without adequate enforcement is absolutely useless.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#179

Post by anigbrowl »

philh wrote: post #130
protomyth wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I try to pick my sides based on what seems right, not based on who else picks that side. I look at the picker of sides and their motives to determine the consequences of picking a side. I tend to favor protection of people as a whole.

> I look at the picker of sides and their motives to determine the consequences of picking a side. Taken literally, this suggests that you can't work out the consequences without looking at the supporters. If that's what you mean, I have to say it seems weird to me. Taken less literally: if you think the consequences of one side winning include "people get harmed", you can just say that. You can point at the conseque…

It's just a different value calculus from your own. You mention that you try to make choices based on 'what seems right' but surely you're aware that different people have different conceptions thereof. Violent extremists are typically very sure of their moral premises even though they may be drastically different from the popular norm.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#180

Post by lol214365 »

falcolas wrote: post #120
wyldfire wrote: post #12

I hate to be in the position of defending a leak such as this. But if what they've done is "merely" compiling data that was available from our public profiles, are they obligated to secure that compilation? I'm asking -- I don't know for sure how the data was gathered, it just sounds like it was from scraping public records + public web sites. Also, can someone ask Troy Hunt whether he has or can get access to this d…

Personally, while I understand that this is nothing illegal, I think it's terribly wrong. We just handed everyone, including the 5% of society who tend towards sociopathy, a nicely tagged, collated (and yet probably slightly inaccurate) list of minorities. Hate women? You have a nice list which includes the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of all those women. Hate muslims? Boy do I have just the list for you.…

Because minorities were so hard to find in the US prior to this...

You know what? Let's keep those minorities at a safe distance from those evil racists. Let's build the wall!

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