Georgia’s secretary of state posts personal details of absentee voters online
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Re: Georgia’s secretary of state posts personal details of absentee voters online
#2If you look on the website there's actually a form where you can download the information a 500Mb spreadsheet with 2.6 million rows, not just what was linked here.
I'm not sure if this is actually priveliged information? Voter rolls typically have some of this information and can be purchased by the general public as far as I understand.
Re: Georgia’s secretary of state posts personal details of absentee voters online
#3Maybe they can have the new secretary of state run another election for governor?
Re: Georgia’s secretary of state posts personal details of absentee voters online
#4If you look on the website there's actually a form where you can download the information a 500Mb spreadsheet with 2.6 million rows, not just what was linked here. I'm not sure if this is actually priveliged information? Voter rolls typically have some of this information and can be purchased by the general public as far as I understand.
The controversy appears to be that you have to agree to something restricting usage of the data when you purchase it, but if someone downloads a publicly-accessible file off of the Internet without some T&C up front, they probably won't assume that there are conditions to its use.
Re: Georgia’s secretary of state posts personal details of absentee voters online
#5> “State law requires the public availability of voter lists, including names and address of registered voters,” she said in an email.
> It’s little surprise that the way Kemp’s office approached confirming absentee ballots was met with anger. “While the data may already be public, it is not publicly available in aggregate like this,”
It's interesting how so many laws are predicated on limited resources. Ie, all names and addresses of registered voters should be publicly available, because we don't think anyone has the resources to manually request, retrieve and process all of that data.
Except that even in the old days, corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals did have the resources to do things that were out of reach to the common person. But because it's so rare, and because it's usually kept secret, no one knows or worries about the ramifications.
And then along comes technology and levels the playing field. Things that only the moneyed people could do previously, can now be done by anyone. And suddenly, people start to realize that's a huge problem.
Many people seem to think that the solution to such flare-ups is to introduce more friction, so that the average person can no longer afford to take advantage of the situation. Perhaps that's better than nothing, but it still leaves a loophole wide enough for megacorps and billionaires to take advantage of. Perhaps the real solution is to change the laws so that no one can legally take advantage of these loopholes, no matter how much money or resources they have. Ie, it's better to fail-fast and fix the underlying bug, than to put up a bunch of hacks and fail silently.
Re: Georgia’s secretary of state posts personal details of absentee voters online
#6If you look on the website there's actually a form where you can download the information a 500Mb spreadsheet with 2.6 million rows, not just what was linked here. I'm not sure if this is actually priveliged information? Voter rolls typically have some of this information and can be purchased by the general public as far as I understand.
This may actually be a violation of the votesafe program actually http://sos.ga.gov/index.php/elections/votesafe
Re: Georgia’s secretary of state posts personal details of absentee voters online
#7I am not sure that it can be considered doxxing if the personally identifying information is what used to be available in the phone book. Ma Bell was apparently doxxing us for decades before it was cool.
Re: Georgia’s secretary of state posts personal details of absentee voters online
#8I worked at the polls in California for the first time this year. We were required to post a public list of everyone who voted including their address. It's posted on the outside of the polling place for anyone to review if they so choose.
The point of anonymous voting is to ensure that the voter's choices are secret, not to conceal the fact that someone voted. Even in Afghanistan where voting can cost your life, purple dye is placed on a finger to maintain a rudimentary system of tracking who has voted and who hasn't.
EDIT: Let me add, I'm no Kemp apologist, but let's keep the focus on the real failures that occurred in GA... Not exaggerated problems.
Re: Georgia’s secretary of state posts personal details of absentee voters online
#9If you look on the website there's actually a form where you can download the information a 500Mb spreadsheet with 2.6 million rows, not just what was linked here. I'm not sure if this is actually priveliged information? Voter rolls typically have some of this information and can be purchased by the general public as far as I understand.
The controversy appears to be that you have to agree to something restricting usage of the data when you purchase it, but if someone downloads a publicly-accessible file off of the Internet without some T&C up front, they probably won't assume that there are conditions to its use.
Here's the terms and conditions you'd ordinarily have to agree to:
https://georgiasecretaryofstate.net/pages/terms-and-conditio...
Re: Georgia’s secretary of state posts personal details of absentee voters online
#10I am not sure that it can be considered doxxing if the personally identifying information is what used to be available in the phone book. Ma Bell was apparently doxxing us for decades before it was cool.
The phone book didn't tell you that someone was an absentee voter.