The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40 • Hacker News Board

Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40

#61

Post by Aeolun » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 8:59 AM UTC

sanotehu wrote: post #13

daodedickinson wrote: post #5

It's clear they didn't have expertise to do it, and I'm tired of reading people that know way more looking down at others over it and assuming they don't want to comply. If they hiding something and malicious, the end result wouldn't have been to send way too much, but I don't see the author realizing this fast enough.

Agreed. You're putting an overworked, underpaid public servant in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario. They complied with a far reaching request and got told their response was too far reaching? I'd quit my job if faced with a legal minefield like that, especially one not actually related to the job itself

Why do you think complying with these requests is not part of the job for Seattle IT?

I would think it’s pretty cool to retrieve this massive amount of data that I wouldn’t otherwise get to play with.

Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40

#62

Post by emerongi » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 9:02 AM UTC

low_tech_love wrote: post #40

united893 wrote: post #14

I find the writer to be a bit of a dick in his responses. Yes, the city IT may not be at the same level as Google engineers, but there’s no need to mock their ballpark estimates, and after the mistake there’s no need to be a jerk about it. Be forthright about the error. Consider being on the other side of this, due to a careless mistake the data for many people is exposed on a random strangers hard drive. Asking for…

How was a lawyer unnecessary? He was threatened after doing the right thing..!

Absolutely. If anyone reading this ends up in a similar situation: please involve lawyers. It's the single best move the author did in this whole mess.

Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40

#63

Post by pontifier » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 9:04 AM UTC

I was quoted almost $200k for a similar request for emails. I was trying to investigate a shady real estate deal, and they made it as difficult as possible. I was never actually able to get the information I requested.

I'm completely disgusted and fed up with corruption.

Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40

#64

Post by nzealand » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 9:05 AM UTC

The dump includes email addresses, both government and private. That does not seem good.

There is a surprisingly little spam. Either that is about to change, or spam didn't get included in the FOIA.

Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40

#65

Post by bpchaps » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 9:12 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #47

bpchaps wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I probably only spent 30 minutes looking at it and used a few regular expressions to look for anything interesting. The point there was to understand the extent of the leak so that I could raise it in the intent of being taken seriously. A search for "(Fuck|Shit|Bitch)" can go a long way. For what it's worth, I used to work at an investment bank spending 30hr/week diving through logs with unix tools, so finding inter…

FWIW I think you should not have done that, though I understand the temptation. At the first indication that the data was not what you requested and contained more than you - or they - bargained for you should have stopped looking at it and alerted both the sender and the relevant data protection authorities in so far as those are a functioning entity where you live to tell them they have an 'accidental disclosure' o…

Fair. Though, in my defense, the last time I tried to report a similarly large leak (completely different circumstances), it wasn't until I was very explicit in what I found that the report was taken seriously and sent to the appropriate place. Otherwise, I think reports like this are just added to a pile of other complaints.

In this case, it took about a week for them to take it seriously. Like last time, it wasn't until I was explicit that they took it seriously.

Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40

#66

Post by bpchaps » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 9:19 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #56

doctorless wrote: post #53

To me, the most interesting thing in this entire post is the following: > Funny enough, in the middle of that question, my internet died and interrupted the call for the first time in the six months I lived in that house. Odd. It came back ten minutes later, and I dialed back into the conference line, but the mood of the call pretty much 180’d. I find that when strange things happen like this, they’re hardly coincide…

That's speculative without any proof and I personally think it is a weak point in the article. I do conference calls several times per week and the number of times I've been accidentally booted out of the room are numerous. Also, once they realized they had left the room of course they would continue to discuss the case and it is obvious they had to consider all possibilities, including the recipient releasing the in…

Er, why the doubt? My internet completely died. My room mates were also affected.. Not sure how I can give proof.

Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40

#67

Post by PakG1 » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 9:21 AM UTC

StudentStuff wrote: post #52

cheeze wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long long term resident with a connection to local government They don't have a choice. Seattle IT is so underfunded that hands are tied because there isn't any resourcing. On one hand, you have to respond to all of these requests (and rightfully so, as it's the law.) On the other, you have no money for your department because it has no funding because the citizens didn't want to spend the money. The person who did t…

A good chunk of this is caused by our city repeatedly choosing awful vendors that bilk the city for crazy amounts of money, and provide trash as the final product. City Light and the new meters/new billing system are great examples, all the new power meters have no encryption, and use FSK for modulation. Asking City Light about this got me a response that FSK was the encryption, and the gal was dumbfounded when I poi…

The vendors may be horrible, but it's still on the shoulders of the city for choosing the vendors. This is really down to the fact that most decision makers have no idea how to understand or differentiate between options. It's been like this for decades. When a secretary of state doesn't know the risks in running a private independent email server and how to ensure those risks don't become issues, how do expect much lower level city governments to make any better decisions. Honestly, the IT workers are often underappreciated, underpaid, and underskilled. I usually don't blame the IT people. If they could work at FANG, they would. If they get into a rut where they end up not caring anymore, it sucks. But let's put blame where it belongs, it's on leadership to develop a culture where people care and on leadership to invest money and resources accordingly.

Edit: though I shall add that it unfortunately is sometimes not possible to build a new culture without firing incumbents. That one is a really unfortunate situation. It's not the fault of low-skilled IT workers if they are enabled and rewarded for poor skills and attitudes. But if an organization wants to make good cultures, it sometimes requires hard decisions. Still don't blame the workers, just like I don't blame factory workers that get automated. It's just an unfortunate thing that can happen that most people don't deserve.

Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40

#68

Post by jacquesm » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 9:32 AM UTC

bpchaps wrote: post #66

jacquesm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's speculative without any proof and I personally think it is a weak point in the article. I do conference calls several times per week and the number of times I've been accidentally booted out of the room are numerous. Also, once they realized they had left the room of course they would continue to discuss the case and it is obvious they had to consider all possibilities, including the recipient releasing the in…

Er, why the doubt? My internet completely died. My room mates were also affected.. Not sure how I can give proof.

Because it is just the timing that makes you say this, and I highly doubt the city of Seattle can - on a moments notice, no less - pull the plug on any residential internet connection.

If true, that would be a far bigger news item than the rest of your story.

Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40

#69

Post by kiallmacinnes » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 9:37 AM UTC

united893 wrote: post #14

I find the writer to be a bit of a dick in his responses. Yes, the city IT may not be at the same level as Google engineers, but there’s no need to mock their ballpark estimates, and after the mistake there’s no need to be a jerk about it. Be forthright about the error. Consider being on the other side of this, due to a careless mistake the data for many people is exposed on a random strangers hard drive. Asking for…

> Asking for an independent third party verification is reasonable.

Not really, for the same reason they never should have sent the excess data in the first place... Why should he give up his privacy to some 3rd party company to help cover up their mistake?

Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40

#70

Post by bpchaps » Sun, Oct 21, 2018, 9:40 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #68

bpchaps wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, why the doubt? My internet completely died. My room mates were also affected.. Not sure how I can give proof.

Because it is just the timing that makes you say this, and I highly doubt the city of Seattle can - on a moments notice, no less - pull the plug on any residential internet connection. If true, that would be a far bigger news item than the rest of your story.

Who knows. It was strange for me, too.