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Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

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Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#181
post #5

> Since the hack, officials restored their website and posted a message announcing they are rebuilding the agency's entire network from scratch. Even if the hacker claims they deleted backups, the agency appears to have had an offline copy, otherwise things would have gotten really messy over the coming months in Romania. So it seems not all has been lost. I was worried about the societal implications of being unable…

This happened in a 50k people town where my father is from in 1982 with a BIG flood that destroyed the town land registry documents (among a lot of the town). Since he's a lawyer, had first hand experience and I was always curious I asked many things about this a while back. Basically, what happened is that they rebuilt it from proof of ownership and testimonies of the people. You can never get to 100% recovery like…

This is where "possession is 9/10ths of the law" comes from.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#182
post #14

Was hoping it was a political act in favor of land reform or against owning property.

We had that almost 80 years ago for a few decades, but we shot a guy at the end of it. I hope the next one to suggest something like this remembers the history and refrains from it. It did help the West, and especially the UK, to get as immigrants very high good plumbers and handy men. The rest of us went into STEM and are now working for FAANGS.

[deleted]

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#183
post #5

> Since the hack, officials restored their website and posted a message announcing they are rebuilding the agency's entire network from scratch. Even if the hacker claims they deleted backups, the agency appears to have had an offline copy, otherwise things would have gotten really messy over the coming months in Romania. So it seems not all has been lost. I was worried about the societal implications of being unable…

This happened in a 50k people town where my father is from in 1982 with a BIG flood that destroyed the town land registry documents (among a lot of the town). Since he's a lawyer, had first hand experience and I was always curious I asked many things about this a while back. Basically, what happened is that they rebuilt it from proof of ownership and testimonies of the people. You can never get to 100% recovery like…

I always wonder how things would be reconciled if something similar happened to a bank. What would be the simplest way to ‘download’ one’s balance whilst proving that the downloaded files were signed by the bank?

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#184
[Fairly off-topic and political]

There's a growing (retarded) perspective, not only here in Romania but in most of the EU, that we must digitalize at all costs; this itself is obviously not a problem, but it usually comes with the removal of the "traditional" options too. The same goes for payments (removal of cash) and basically every aspect of the administration/society where this could be applied. The most recent concrete example for Romania is the mandatory digital signature by ANAF (IRS equivalent) for all companies.

Unlike other regions of the West: NA/WE/rest of the West (SK, JP, etc.), in EE, people (*younger generations, explained below) don't often think about the aspects of confidentiality that much, or if they do, they usually apply it incorrectly (either IRL [filming in public] or online ["I've accepted a draconian TOS that gives the company rights to all of my data, but I haven't actually read any of it, and now I'm invoking my "GDPR rights" against said company."]).

It does not take a genius or a historian to observe that while the older generations do not have this "problem" (they're very skeptical of the gov. [at least in certain aspects], in an almost american fashion — explained by the fact that they've experienced communism), younger generations position themselves in the extreme opposite; they despise the older generations ("boomers") for being luddites and somehow blame them for the gap in civilizational progress between WE and EE. There is a legitimate point here, of course, but it should be noted that the argument is almost always presented in an emotional, overwhelmingly irrational fashion, and almost never includes comparisons between the centralization done by the state in the past [communists] and the new one attempted by current govs [but digitalized]. (This delves into a broader socio-cultural divide between the generations that includes other aspects like religion, traditions, etc.)

The biggest portion of the so-called "IT people" who call for this "digitalization wave" are midwits, "inverse luddites" (they don't care about the implications), and, in smaller numbers, grifters and second-order beneficiaries (on the "digitalization" gov. projects). Obviously, it should be mentioned that, despite progress, nepotism and corruption are still present, and there are cases where gov. contracts are not given to the best candidate.

As a person who's both working in the IT sector and not a boomer (despite the impression of my comment), "we" should be careful about enabling totalitarians in our endeavors."Hackers" is just one reason out of a multitude of other reasons for not abandoning the sacred paper (see the ES+PT incident one year ago).

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#185
post #171

The UK used to have a distributed system - everyone had to have a solicitor store "deeds" of their property, which were a sort of paper blockchain of all the transactions the land had been in since - I don't know, since records began I guess. Since we got a centralised land registry cheaper solicitors have binned these, but some properties still have them as a historical record.

Not sure what you mean by 'binned'. In some Common Law jurisdictions the deed document represents the property and whoever psychically holds of the deed controls the property. Any centralized recording system merely records the last known status of the deed and additional information such as the nominal owner, mortgage holders, etc.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened in a 50k people town where my father is from in 1982 with a BIG flood that destroyed the town land registry documents (among a lot of the town). Since he's a lawyer, had first hand experience and I was always curious I asked many things about this a while back. Basically, what happened is that they rebuilt it from proof of ownership and testimonies of the people. You can never get to 100% recovery like…

This is where "possession is 9/10ths of the law" comes from.

I actually think our discussion came from there! Or at least, there was a previous/later discussion about this exactly related to that.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened in a 50k people town where my father is from in 1982 with a BIG flood that destroyed the town land registry documents (among a lot of the town). Since he's a lawyer, had first hand experience and I was always curious I asked many things about this a while back. Basically, what happened is that they rebuilt it from proof of ownership and testimonies of the people. You can never get to 100% recovery like…

I always wonder how things would be reconciled if something similar happened to a bank. What would be the simplest way to ‘download’ one’s balance whilst proving that the downloaded files were signed by the bank?

Your best chance would probably be mailed statements

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#188
post #5

> Since the hack, officials restored their website and posted a message announcing they are rebuilding the agency's entire network from scratch. Even if the hacker claims they deleted backups, the agency appears to have had an offline copy, otherwise things would have gotten really messy over the coming months in Romania. So it seems not all has been lost. I was worried about the societal implications of being unable…

Romania is not very digitalized, and it still has a lot of paper bureaucracy.

Even if the digital records were completely lost, they still have the paper ones.

> being unable to prove land ownership

People know who owns what, there are also paper contracts of ownership which are more authoritative than the digital records.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If its at least somewhat recent hopefully those affected still have paperwork for any property ownership transfers. Finding proof of property you bought decades ago would be a huge pain.

The problem is that everything will potentially be under dispute, since anyone can claim they purchased a patch of land whose registry was missed in the restoration

You’re going to need more than just a claim to prove that, and anyone who did purchase land likely has some evidence in support, even if it’s testimony from others.
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