Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

mchap.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 230 posts

Re: The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

#11

Post by bradley13 »

Government IT is famously expensive, and so often a disaster. I recently needed to open an account with a local agency. The fun started with two date fields on the web form, which turned out (trial and error) to require different formats.

I finally received my credentials, but they didn't work. Assuming that the password was likely the problem, I tried the password reset function, only to get a 404 error.

The person I corresponded with was very polite, but it took three resets on their end, before I could finally log in.

A private company with these issues would go out if business. The government probably just hires another incompetent dweeb, who will have a job for life.

Re: The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

#15

Post by ta1243 »

bradley13 wrote: post #11

Government IT is famously expensive, and so often a disaster. I recently needed to open an account with a local agency. The fun started with two date fields on the web form, which turned out (trial and error) to require different formats. I finally received my credentials, but they didn't work. Assuming that the password was likely the problem, I tried the password reset function, only to get a 404 error. The person…

The government probably has outsourced this to the only company which bid based on some "anti-corruption" or "fair-trading" rules which were passed. There is of course no way to hold that outsourced company to account.

Re: The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

#16

Post by legitster »

froh wrote: post #4

wow! in Europe, this request 1. From address 2. To address 3. bcc addresses 4. cc addresses 5. Time 6. Date correlates person-related information (who was in contact with whom at which date and time). storing it, let alone processing it is only admissible on a need to know basis. even if you jump through the hoop of an officer acting on behalf of Seattle is not a person any more, which is a stretch already, even then…

So, email addresses kind of suffer from the same problem as Social Security numbers - they were never designed to be private information! But they have been forced to fit that role.

And, you know, cities have no problem giving out personal information all of the time. Your personal address, or whoever owns property in a city, is a matter of public record. And so the city has no problem handing out your name and address to anyone that asks. Your email address is much lower stake.

Re: The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

#17

Post by legitster »

ta1243 wrote: post #15
bradley13 wrote: post #11

Government IT is famously expensive, and so often a disaster. I recently needed to open an account with a local agency. The fun started with two date fields on the web form, which turned out (trial and error) to require different formats. I finally received my credentials, but they didn't work. Assuming that the password was likely the problem, I tried the password reset function, only to get a 404 error. The person…

The government probably has outsourced this to the only company which bid based on some "anti-corruption" or "fair-trading" rules which were passed. There is of course no way to hold that outsourced company to account.

If you actually read the story, this was directly with Seattle's IT department.

Re: The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

#20

Post by techsupporter »

nostromo wrote: post #8
froh wrote: post #4

wow! in Europe, this request 1. From address 2. To address 3. bcc addresses 4. cc addresses 5. Time 6. Date correlates person-related information (who was in contact with whom at which date and time). storing it, let alone processing it is only admissible on a need to know basis. even if you jump through the hoop of an officer acting on behalf of Seattle is not a person any more, which is a stretch already, even then…

In the US emails to and from government workers are generally considered public record. It's important for transparency.

I agree that government records should be open and are good for transparency. The problem comes when people don't realize that something they're doing would put all of the personal information they've submitted into the public record, or when it's required to do this to access a service.

In Washington, and Seattle specifically, doing something as simple as reserving a park space or signing up for a constituent newsletter means a public record has been created. Data brokers and people who want to "just reach out for a simple conversation" and political parties routinely make grabs for this data to populate mailing lists and the like.

That's annoying and shouldn't be a function of public records laws. We exempt utility billing records, even when the utility is owned by a city, and library card data and so on. Asking for a service from the government should be wholly exempt.

Post reply on HN