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Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

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Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#201

Post by rmc »

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.

> What law did they break, exactly? These aren't medical or financial records.

I know this is USA, but FYI in the EU, all personal data is protected.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#202

Post by stale2002 »

criley2 wrote: post #176
strictnein wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 para…

This isn't social security numbers.

This is all publicly available data scrapping stuff. Like your public Facebook profile.

If you don't want that stuff to be leaked, then don't put your info publicly on Facebook.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#203

Post by kevindqc »

nostrademons wrote: post #85
kevindqc wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why does it need to be public? In the US, you register with the party no? So the party you register with your information, and they can do what you said > go to their houses, send them things, and know for sure they're only hitting up people in their party, so as not to mobilize the other side.

Depends on the state, but in general, no. You register as a member of the party. You register with the state. Voter registration information is used to determine who's eligible to vote, and you don't necessarily need to have a party affiliation to be able to vote (I don't, for example). My guess is that it's public to avoid unfairly preferencing the major parties, so that they give at least lip service to the idea th…

Ah! I see, thanks.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#204

Post by kevindqc »

gregshap wrote: post #92
kevindqc wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why does it need to be public? In the US, you register with the party no? So the party you register with your information, and they can do what you said > go to their houses, send them things, and know for sure they're only hitting up people in their party, so as not to mobilize the other side.

Nope, in the US you register with the state and you can optionally tell the state that you are a member of some party. You can register to vote and self-identify as 'Dem' 'Republican' etc while getting your driver's license. Aside from the public voter file update, the Democratic Party doesn't get any special notification if you pick them, and you don't need to apply or get accepted in any way.

Ah! I see, thanks.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#205

Post by anigbrowl »

rattray wrote: post #145

I don't typically don hats with this much tin foil, and I don't think this is likely , but... The real danger of data like this, in my opinion, illegal usage for voter fraud. Find people who are likely to vote against you and likely to have poor voter registration documents, and remove them from the polls so they can't vote. Find people who aren't likely to vote at all and vote on their behalf. In-person, the only ve…

The real danger of data like this is concentration camps and death squads. I don't like stating things so dramatically but that's the sort of thing that actually happens, not just in WW2 but also under the USSR, in many dictatorships in the developing world, when countries like the former Yugoslavia experience political collapse, and so on. Just a couple of months ago there was a systematic effort in the Russian federation of Chechnya to round up and incarcerate homosexuals.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that atrocities couldn't possibly happen here just because you're used to thinking of them as something that only happens in other places.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#206

Post by stale2002 »

frisco wrote: post #129
strictnein wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What law did they break, exactly? That's not how laws work. Laws can be whatever we write them to be. Losing medical and financial records was once not illegal too.

So, what, it should be illegal to leak your data on public Facebook scraping?

None of the info they had was private info.

If you don't want your info to be leaked then don't make it public.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#207

Post by stale2002 »

remline wrote: post #125
ganoushoreilly wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are gathering data through any means it's no different than other marketing firms. I think the real debate needs to be about what any companies can share.

But it is not about what they can share, it is about what they or anyone can collect, store and use. What you can share lets companies store and make decisions based on data they shouldn't have and couldn't share as long as their inputs and outputs look clean. I,e. Facebook or Google could help you intentionally run a race biased campaign across all their assets as long as they don't tell you any specifics and includ…

Why do you think any of this data is private?

They seem like they were doing reddit scraping/Facebook scraping.

Nothing illegal about that.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#208

Post by wutwutwutwut »

stale2002 wrote: post #202
criley2 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>?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 para…

This isn't social security numbers. This is all publicly available data scrapping stuff. Like your public Facebook profile. If you don't want that stuff to be leaked, then don't put your info publicly on Facebook.

I didn't put mine on Facebook. What's step 2?

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#209

Post by wdr1 »

criley2 wrote: post #176
strictnein wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 para…

Jail is a bit much, but I do think corporations should be financially accountable for the clean-up of privacy spills. (E.g., similar to environmental disasters.)

If corporations face the prospect of a big bill, and the cost of that bill far exceeds the cost of keeping user data safe, a lot of the right things will start happen.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#210

Post by jtuente »

dsmithatx wrote: post #143
794CD01 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a slippery slope. Analysis of writing style, patterns of use, etc can deanonymize data to the point where basically everything becomes PII.

Treat everything as PII and we are good. The constitution has an amendment to protect our rights. That seems important. I know of no guaranteed right of corporations to infringe on our privacy and to provide access our data. Forty years ago we didn't have this issue because there wasn't so much data for them to try to get their grubby greedy hands on. They don't need our data (ANY OF IT)!

The US constitution forbids the US government from acting in certain ways, it in no way impedes upon private organizations. Tort law and the like is what holds private organizations accountable. i.e. The fourth amendment does not protect you from a private entity or individual; laws covering trespassing, theft, breaking and entering do. Please don't drag the constitution into an argument it does not have a place in.
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