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

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

#91

Post by internetter »

ajkjk wrote: post #77

Wow, this person seems really annoying and entitled.

Really? Do you agree this data should cost 30 million dollars to retrieve? Do you agree that 10tb of storage should cost 1000s of dollars? Would you be mad if someone sent you data you did not ask for and then threatened legal action if you did not grant full access to your personal data in return?

I don't agree with all his takes. It's absurd he toyed with the idea of asking to keep this data, for instance... But I think he is rightfully pissed.

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

#92

Post by rootsudo »

legitster wrote: post #80
eli wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I give the uranium back and they want to search my house anyway they better have a warrant

Okay, but if you demand a warrant to confirm you don't have uranium, you can't be surprised if they are going to treat you as hostile.

How is that hostile? To be aware of your rights and state they can’t do an illegal search?

Demanding a warrant to be searched is not hostile it’s the equivalent of saying no thank you. Hostile is when they have a warrant and you still refuse.

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

#93

Post by jawns »

ska wrote: post #34
jawns wrote: post #22

The most interesting part of this story is the potential legal risk of holding onto the records that were improperly disclosed. Had the author not notified the city that they had royally screwed up by divulging far more sensitive information than they had realized, they likely would have never realized the error, and he would have been free to do whatever he liked with the data. But once he notified them of their err…

> and he would have been free to do whatever he liked with the data. I think that's a pretty strong assertion.

You're right, my wording was imprecise. My point was that he could have continued to delve into the information without anyone hassling him, unless the city independently discovered their mistake. But you are right to point out that he still would have been somewhat limited in what he could do with the data without arousing suspicion.

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

#94

Post by thsksbd »

ajkjk wrote: post #77

Wow, this person seems really annoying and entitled.

This person is doing the dirty ground work of protecting our rights, and incurring legal fees because of it.

The entitled prima donnas are the public employees of Seattle that seem to have the attitude that they shouldn't be bothered to do their jobs properly.

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

#95

Post by legitster »

mschuster91 wrote: post #84
legitster wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not how the law works. If enriched uranium shows up at your door, you don't just get to hold onto it just because someone screwed up.

> If enriched uranium shows up at your door, you don't just get to hold onto it just because someone screwed up. Yeah but that's because there are specific laws regulating possession of certain materials (NBC capable, explosives, drug precursors).

Sure. But ill-gotten property is one of them.

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

#97

Post by pixl97 »

eli wrote: post #73
legitster wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not how the law works. If enriched uranium shows up at your door, you don't just get to hold onto it just because someone screwed up.

If I give the uranium back and they want to search my house anyway they better have a warrant

This said, don't be surprised if there is some government looking guy sitting at your property line with a Giger counter for a few days.

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

#98

Post by legitster »

thsksbd wrote: post #85
legitster wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A warrant is only required for a police search. You can agree to have anyone search your property as a resolution to any legal agreement if you want to.

A warrant is required for all government search, and I can just as easily waive my right for a warrant w/ the police. In fact, a workers for the municipality is the very last government level Id want snooping in my house. Next thing I know Im getting fined for having the wrong colored bathroom tiles.

> A warrant is required for all government search

This is not at all true.

For example, if you enter into an agreement with your state to be a foster parent, you also have to agree for the state to inspect your home regularly. It's part of the agreement - no warrant required.

The state is free to make search a condition of an agreement. So if the state wants to say "Agree to a search or we will pursue criminal proceedings", you are free to accept or deny their agreement.

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

#100

Post by chaps »

legitster wrote: post #37
jawns wrote: post #22

The most interesting part of this story is the potential legal risk of holding onto the records that were improperly disclosed. Had the author not notified the city that they had royally screwed up by divulging far more sensitive information than they had realized, they likely would have never realized the error, and he would have been free to do whatever he liked with the data. But once he notified them of their err…

> They thanked me for bringing the situation to their attention and all that, but the mood of the call was as if both parties had a knife behind their back. Somewhere towards the end of the call, I asked them if it was okay to keep the emails. Why not at least ask, right? >...This isn't something I'm even remotely cool with, so we ended the call a couple minutes later, and agreed to have our lawyers speak going forwa…

This was definitely not my first rodeo and I like to think I've done a good job in acting in good faith in future similar instances [1] for example. Every time I've reported something, the other side acts differently every single time. Sometimes they're friendly, sometimes they put out obvious traps ("prove it that you found HIPAA sensitive info"), and sometimes they're just thankful it didn't go worse.

You gotta realize that we live in a world where people have been prosecuted for using nmap. So we have to ride a fine line between careful and aggressive.

I don't expect this to be a thing that stops happening as I continue sending FOIAs. Recently a police agency released to me thousands of social security numbers from ALPR scans (of all things). When I reported it, they shrugged us off and asked us to redact the documents ourselves. When we refused (why would I accept that liability) to, they redacted more, but left in about 800 more SSNs.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/3aqagy/contractor-exposed-th...

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