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

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

#181

Post by djrogers »

maxxxxx wrote: post #173
danso wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voter registration is considered public information in many states. Some states even provide the entire database on their website to download. However, voter registration does not include who a person voted for in an election. You are free to augment the database with your own data, of course.

I don't even understand why party affiliation is tracked by the state. What's that good for other than entrenching the two party state? Parties should have their own member lists.

There are states with ‘closed primaries’, where certain elections are only open to registered party voters - ie a Democrat would not be allowed to vote in the Republican primary and vice-versa.

This, and ‘because that’s how we’ve always done it’ are probably the main reasons party affiliation is part of voter registration.

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

#182

Post by kasey_junk »

jacquesm wrote: post #147
kasey_junk wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I could disagree with you more. At least in the US there is a very strong expectation that communications between governmental employees is non-private except in very special circumstances. You'll note Matt says that the Police and Human Services departments have not responded, I'd guess thats not an accident because police records and personnel/medical records are largely exempt from FOIA requests. Furt…

> between governmental employees The request contains the names of private individuals through BCC and CC headers requested and exactly when they communicated with which government officials.

Yes. When I say “between governmental employees” I mean between them & anyone.

This is a normal expectation to the point where there are lots of rules about what public servants can even use private email addresses for. This was a big deal of course in the 2016 campaign.

This is likely a cultural difference, I view the data that Matt requested as mine because that governmental agent is acting in my name.

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

#183

Post by danso »

walshemj wrote: post #176
jacquesm wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which I'm not even sure is the situation here That's the key bit right there. So, if you are not sure - and they are also not sure - then they could ask for a ruling before releasing. Err on the side of caution is good practice when it comes to releasing data. I just looked at the dataset and it is full of information that I would normally consider to be private, which private citizens contact which government offi…

Say an ex finds the new address of a former partner then goes around and shoots them dead. BTW I am not being hyperbolic here there was a case where this happened when I worked for BT - someone as a favor looked someone's new address up for a friend which resulted in a murder.

The scenario you propose is possible through using Google, and/or many other services that collate public records of people's names and addresses. Try Googling your name and one of your cities of residence some time.

> someone as a favor looked someone's new address up for a friend which resulted in a murder.

A government employee who looks up someone's address for a friend is not covered by FOI laws. Just as FOI doesn't protect cops who use the DMV database to look up other cops they like/hate:

- https://www.wired.com/2012/11/payout-for-cop-database-abuse/

- https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-pines-police-o...

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

#184

Post by mkoryak »

ada1981 wrote: post #153
rocqua wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you actually give them that clone and sign the documents? Or did you give push back like in the article? It feels to me like they shouldn't have much of a leg to stand on.

I don’t understand... You found an drive, tried to return it and then we’re subject to an illegal search? Or you consented to a search that would have otherwise been illegal?

I consented to a search

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

#185

Post by wolco »

rocqua wrote: post #73
c3534l wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never assumed that an email address I gave the government would be protected. I would also not assume that the contents of any email I sent would be in any way protected either. The government is collectively owned. Your police record, where you live, who you're married to, and whether or not you voted last election are publicly available. I would rather all of that be protected in some way, but I think it's c…

> I have never assumed that an email address I gave the government would be protected. I would also not assume that the contents of any email I sent would be in any way protected either. I have similar assumptions, but what about the less technically inclined citizens? Moreover, I wouldn't be surprised if the ploy described by the OP: > Could I request this data myself, then start emailing them scam emails "I know yo…

DKIM and/or SPF can be a liability if you want to accept everyone's email. Only use if filtering is more important.

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

#186

Post by astura »

danso wrote: post #143
coolboy93290 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar story. I worked at a polling company out of college owned by a Standford professor. My first task: After a poll is finished online, match that with voter records (using emails and addresses). My first question was: "Well, that is a cool idea, but, there is no way the government would release a huge database of every california voter and their party affiliation. Let alone, the users entering in online poll inf…

Voter registration is considered public information in many states. Some states even provide the entire database on their website to download. However, voter registration does not include who a person voted for in an election. You are free to augment the database with your own data, of course.

>However, voter registration does not include who a person voted for in an election.

Many include

1) Last time you voted

And

2) what your party affliction is

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

#187

Post by danso »

astura wrote: post #186
danso wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voter registration is considered public information in many states. Some states even provide the entire database on their website to download. However, voter registration does not include who a person voted for in an election. You are free to augment the database with your own data, of course.

>However, voter registration does not include who a person voted for in an election. Many include 1) Last time you voted And 2) what your party affliction is

Yes, though neither of those include who you actually voted for.

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

#188

Post by khloe122 »

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

#189

Post by TeMPOraL »

techsupporter wrote: post #119
TeMPOraL wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the problem isn't tech, but business models. No amount of tech brainpower can help when bus operators think of their schedules as data to be sold instead of given away for free.

At least in Puget Sound, every transit operator (except for Community Transit) makes their real-time bus arrival data publicly available for free via Sound Transit's Open Transit Data service, OneBusAway: https://www.soundtransit.org/Open-Transit-Data (OneBusAway is the name of the app that shows information to end users and the name of the API service that developers can query.) I know that this service is widely av…

Good for you and your city. My hometown apparently made an exclusive deal with a startup, which I hear is why we still can't see bus schedules on Google Maps.

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

#190

Post by danso »

kasey_junk wrote: post #106
jacquesm wrote: post #27

Interesting dataset. Data like this can be used to identify strong links between contractors and government officials. One problem is that the metadata should have only contained anonymized entries for the email addresses of the counterparties of the Seattle.gov addresses, the article leaves this unclear. Another potential problem is that if a case of corruption or nepotism is identified that has not been passed to t…

I'm not sure I could disagree with you more. At least in the US there is a very strong expectation that communications between governmental employees is non-private except in very special circumstances. You'll note Matt says that the Police and Human Services departments have not responded, I'd guess thats not an accident because police records and personnel/medical records are largely exempt from FOIA requests. Furt…

> Further, the idea that sleuths (amateur seems pejorative in this case) are working with city governments to battle corruption does not hold up to Matt's (or other journalists) experience.

Yes, exactly this. History has shown that government employees and officials, being human, are reluctant to dig into, nevermind snitch about matters that may impugn their own colleagues. That a random citizen, or even a journalist, could convince law enforcement to go to a judge based on trends found via analysis of anonymized hashes is unrealistic. Nevermind that it effectively denies the benefits of transparency to anyone who isn't trained in data science.

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