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Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

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Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#221

Post by karmelapple »

grovegames wrote: post #198
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…

But what law specifically was broken? Should we have a law that punishes the CEO for data breeches? Is a CEO responsible if his experts recommended the practice? Is the CEO responsible if their staff went around and did this without conscent? That seems rife for abuse. Don't like your CEO, leak some data and have him go to jail.

I think data that has to do with voting records, or suspected voting records, would be very reasonable to be under the purview of being treated as sensitive data that, if breached, should have consequences to a company.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#222

Post by grovegames »

karmelapple wrote: post #221
grovegames wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what law specifically was broken? Should we have a law that punishes the CEO for data breeches? Is a CEO responsible if his experts recommended the practice? Is the CEO responsible if their staff went around and did this without conscent? That seems rife for abuse. Don't like your CEO, leak some data and have him go to jail.

I think data that has to do with voting records, or suspected voting records, would be very reasonable to be under the purview of being treated as sensitive data that, if breached, should have consequences to a company.

I'm not saying this shouldn't have consequences. What I'm saying is this is far too nuanced to just say "lock up the CEO"

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#223

Post by anigbrowl »

samstave wrote: post #216
anigbrowl wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are times when I disagree with you, but then there are times like this when I can't agree more. Now, with that said, I find this position slightly juxtaposed to the position you appeared to hold on the privacy of citizens when the Snowden leaks happened. Why would political preferences be more sacrosanct than other preferences or private predilections people hold... It would be great to define all the data-type…

A good question indeed. I was not at all thrilled about eh Snowden leaks, but I had, and still have, some faith in the mechanisms of institutional governance, plus I viewed it in the context of strategic calculus.

Being a Euro I personally favor very rigorous privacy protections, and think you should be able to know who has data on you, get detailed copies of it in some accessible format, and request its deletion. Public institutions that do have a custodial data function should be subject to increasing levels of accountability and their powers should not be unlimited.

Now, since the US doesn't currently promulgate such strict data-gathering and retention standards in the public or private sector as I would like, it's a strategic reality that well-resourced actors like foreign governments can vacuum that up for their own ends, whether nefarious or merely curious. So I'm OK with the NSA collecting such data insofar as it seems irrational for the government to put itself at a disadvantage relative to everyone else in the private sector, in the same way that it would irrational for police officers to have fewer powers than regular people, as opposed to greater responsibility in the exercise of those powers.

In short, if all that data on people can be legally bought or acquired, it'd be pretty stupid for the USA/NSA to be the only entity that didn't have a copy.

I do heartily agree that data aggregation in both public and private sectors is way, way out of control, and I also agree that a checklist approach would be far preferable to yet more books of rules. I have some radical (but inchoate) technical approaches to this problem in mind, if you want to get in touch via gmail.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#224

Post by shostack »

DannyBee wrote: post #24

Speaking as a guy with a lot of experience with voter data ( I built the first "where do I vote" apps for Google and helped found the voting information project): This is actually almost entirely public data. Yes, including addresses and phone numbers and political affiliation. There are some states that is not public as part of the voter file, but you can still get it other ways publicly. For example: USPS, etc. Som…

The modeling info is the real value.

So taking that modeled data, loading it into Cambridge Analytica (which I understand is somewhat of a DMP in this sense), and leveraging it with highly-customized creative targeted against Custom Audience uploads using this modeled data would be insanely valuable to a political player with the capital to deploy this info weapon.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#225

Post by Retra »

johnmarcus wrote: post #178
anigbrowl wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

The hardest part of data processing is collecting it. If you can just grab already collated data for cheap, then it absolutely is more likely to be exploited.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#226

Post by Retra »

dragonwriter wrote: post #196
frisco wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It absolutely is how criminal laws work under the Constitutional prohibition of ex post facto laws; while we can write forward looking criminal laws however we want (within other Constitutional limits), we can't apply those new laws to past conduct.

You can apply them to discussions about hypothetical solutions to current problems, though.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#227

Post by bduerst »

nemothekid wrote: post #219
Godel_unicode wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be interested in visiting : Facebook.com Lexisnexis.com Twitter.com Plus.google.com LinkedIn.com Etc...

Not sure I understand your response. I wouldn't describe Facebook's security processes as "careless", nor would I describe their vast and complete data collection as "for funsies"

I think their point is that there are thousands of programmers who handle this data on a daily basis as part of their job - intentionally limiting the scope to "funsies" is ignoring that.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#228

Post by unityByFreedom »

fav_collector wrote: post #93
unityByFreedom wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is actually almost entirely public data Birthday is an included item. That's definitely private as it is often used to confirm identity. "almost public" is meaningless. One data item, like credit card number, or birthday, can make this a dangerous leak.

> Birthday is an included item. That's definitely private as it is often used to confirm identity. mylife.com publicly posts birthdays so apparently not

No kidding, but I don't want that information out there, and I imagine most people don't.

Just because some skeezy website shares all my personal information does not make it public information. It's private to me and I'd rather it remain undistributed, where possible.

Overall point being, this US voter data leak is bad. That appears to have released information on all of us that we consider private.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#229

Post by unityByFreedom »

creepydata wrote: post #144
unityByFreedom wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is actually almost entirely public data Birthday is an included item. That's definitely private as it is often used to confirm identity. "almost public" is meaningless. One data item, like credit card number, or birthday, can make this a dangerous leak.

Um, no. Your birthday is certainly not private information. Births are openly published in the local paper and online. Not to mention stuff like this - http://www.wfsb.com/story/26835982/website-displaying-voters...

Um, yes. It certainly is. I don't want it released publicly, nor have I consented to release it to any website.

If there are websites out there sharing that private information, they're doing it without my consent.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#230

Post by Retra »

1024core wrote: post #52
protomyth wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, for internal use is fine and dandy, but revealing it to the world is scummy, a violation of privacy, and can lead to retribution.

That's like saying "it's OK to have racist thoughts, just don't say them out aloud". Whether it's revealed or not is secondary to the act of compiling itself.

It is ok to have any thoughts you like about anything. Once you act on them, that's when other people have to take into consideration their consequences. And speech is certainly something with consequences.
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