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Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

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Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#181

Post by arianvanp »

wyldfire wrote: post #54
arianvanp wrote: post #23

So you think it is okay to model ethnicity and religion of 200 milion citizens? This is how my country got all their jews killed in WWII [0]. The mere thought of compiling such information here would lead to some hefty jail time these days. I really cannot believe you can even defend such a thing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_registration#Netherlands

Whoa! We got to Godwin super fast this time. Please re-read what I wrote and consider that I might have the best intentions to explore a discussion with HN. Note also that I discussed the nature of securing the data and not its compilation. Note that IMO several European countries forfeit some freedoms that I consider valuable and critical for democracy. IMO it is your right to observe the world as it is and note wha…

It's not an attack at you personally. The contrary. But I noticed that a lot of comments found this kind of data collection 'normal'. and apparently in the US this is very much legal. And I as a person find this very troubling, because in Europe these kind of decisions caused a Genocide, which is a result that should not be taken lightly. Do you really want the RNC to collect religious information about all 200 million voters? What happpens if this information falls into wrong hands (in our case it was Nazi's). You just handed someone a potential 200 million long hit list.

So yes it went Godwin quickly, but it is the painful truth.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#182

Post by rattray »

rwc wrote: post #149
rattray wrote: post #145

I don't typically don hats with this much tin foil, and I don't think this is likely , but... The real danger of data like this, in my opinion, illegal usage for voter fraud. Find people who are likely to vote against you and likely to have poor voter registration documents, and remove them from the polls so they can't vote. Find people who aren't likely to vote at all and vote on their behalf. In-person, the only ve…

No. The data that would be useful for wide-scale voter fraud is already widely available from public/free sources, including state Secretaries of State or Departments of Elections. The loss here is all the very expensive extra modeling and demographic work that isn't included on those files. But having that doesn't massively alter the mechanics of the voter fraud effort you're describing.

The expensive modeling (and data collection) makes it much cheaper and more feasible.

I agree that it doesn't change the fundamental mechanics, or enable otherwise impossible attacks.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#183

Post by bluejekyll »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #165
fnovd wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't blame a "careless programmer" when the real problem is organizations simply not committing any resources to security. It's like a hospital only employing 1 nurse and blaming her when patients inevitably die. The organization has a clear responsibility to employee a sufficient number of experts to protect their data. DRA is not unique here but does demonstrate a pattern of companies playing fast and loose wi…

> You can't blame a "careless programmer" when the real problem is organizations simply not committing any resources to security. It's like a hospital only employing 1 nurse and blaming her when patients inevitably die. This isn't a very good example. A shortage of nurses will directly correlate to poor patient care and possible death. But a shortage of security experts? Who knows. I worked at an insurance company th…

> Security is a major problem in tech. It's very difficult, it's nuanced and its vast. Security covers so so much that it would be difficult to one or maybe even a handful of security experts to fully over all aspects of an app depending on your scope.

Which is why it's so important to hold companies that screw it up accountable. That's the only way to get it to change. Forget about everything else, accountability will force new rules for data storage and protection. Without accountability, nothing will change.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#184

Post by anigbrowl »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #55
protomyth wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the KKK and Jim Crow supporters were a bit farther up the ladder of 'unpleasant'. 'Unpleasant' being used in the same meaning and tone as a southern lady saying "aren't you special".

In their day they were only mildly unpleasant. Furthermore, those groups they believed they were acting to promote policy that believed was in the best interest of the nation, regardless of how we see them in hindsight. Imagine if there existed similar databases then. Would you hire someone if you knew they were firmly pro-segregation at age 20-something in 1950-something?

policy that believed was in the best interest of the nation

Which nation, exactly?

Imagine if there existed similar databases then. Would you hire someone if you knew they were firmly pro-segregation at age 20-something in 1950-something?

Probably not, not. I would certainly probe very carefully to see whether they had abandoned such a stance, since many aspects of personality and and political attitude are formed early in life. If you go back and look at documentary footage from around the time schools were integrated, in the 50s, you can see many youngish people protesting that and waving placards with swastikas and so forth on them (this less than 2 decades after the Nazis were defeated in WW2). A lot of those people held on to those ideas and passed them onto their kids.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#185

Post by anigbrowl »

nostrademons wrote: post #175
anigbrowl wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume sociopaths just want to pick on individuals? There are ambitious sociopaths that draw up plans for things like ethnic cleansing, genocide and so forth. We have abundant examples of such behavior within recent history. I think your concept of sociopathy qua serial killer is uninformed and stereotypical. Most sociopaths are not stabby weirdos blinded by hatred, they're just self-centred people with di…

I don't assume that sociopaths just want to pick on individuals. I assume that the ambitious sociopaths drawing up plans for ethnic cleansing are the people who compiled this database in the first place. Someone with the resources to perform ethnic cleansing could easily pony up the few thousand dollars that is required to buy this data in the first place: http://aristotle.com/voterlists/ http://nationbuilder.com/vot…

I see, I misunderstood the point you were making in your earlier post, sorry.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#186

Post by [deleted] »

strictnein wrote: post #56
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #47

As long as the CEO of an company (RNC) that gives data to an outsourcer (Deep Root Analytics) is not going to jail to give data to an unqualified company, nothing will change. If the CEO goes to jail, things will change very rapidly (CEO will manage his CMO much tighter who will first want to see an security audit not older than 6 months). At least CEOs I have reported to as CTO were very sensitive for implemention i…

What law did they break, exactly? These aren't medical or financial records. A careless programmer makes a bad choice and the CEO has to go to jail? Come on.

[deleted]

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#187

Post by anigbrowl »

timdavila wrote: post #104
enzanki_ars wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Formatted: RNC_RegID State 2012ObamaVoter_DRA_12_16 2012RomneyVoter_DRA_12_16 2016ClintonVoter_DRA_12_16 2016TrumpVoter_DRA_12_16 AmericaFirstForeignPolicy_agree_DRA_12_16 AmericaFirstForeignPolicy_disagree_DRA_12_16 AutoCompaniesShipJobsOverseas_agree_DRA_12_16 AutoCompaniesShipJobsOverseas_disagree_DRA_12_16 CorpReputs_AmericanMakers_DRA_12_16 CorpReputs_DailyLives_DRA_12_16 CorpReputs_Egalitarians_DRA_12_16 CorpRe…

How could one tell if a vote is "reluctant" or not, based on the available data?

Lots of ways. Perhaps you know they're a super-loyal Republican voter and you have things that correlate with that, such as willingness to vote when presented with an online poll. You might know they were reluctant because the person shifted between the available alternatives during primary season - perhaps supporting Jeb! Bush, then Marco rubio, then Ted Cruz, then John Kasich, before finally falling into line when Trump won the nomination. You could then infer that Trump was the absolute last choice but that they would still 'hold their nose' and vote for him in the general election, either due to loyalty to GOP on particular policy issues or because of some long-standing hatred of Hillary Clinton, or just a history of being very conformist in political matters (as many, many people are).

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#188

Post by notheguyouthink »

gr3yh47 wrote: post #123
DannyBee wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said in the other thread, this is all public data from various sources (except the modeling). It will be fully filled out. It's very common for political orgs to have the entire voter file for the US (or be able to query it using SQL)

its the aggregation and easily searchable format for 2/3 of citizens that makes this REALLY dangerous for identity theft. they were still grossly irresponsible. no consequences will happen though.

Pardon my ignorance, what is the key data in this leak for identity theft? Eg, I didn't see anything really nasty like SSN, so what makes it easy for identity theft?

(not disagreeing, rather I'm seeking information)

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#189

Post by eof »

strictnein wrote: post #56
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #47

As long as the CEO of an company (RNC) that gives data to an outsourcer (Deep Root Analytics) is not going to jail to give data to an unqualified company, nothing will change. If the CEO goes to jail, things will change very rapidly (CEO will manage his CMO much tighter who will first want to see an security audit not older than 6 months). At least CEOs I have reported to as CTO were very sensitive for implemention i…

What law did they break, exactly? These aren't medical or financial records. A careless programmer makes a bad choice and the CEO has to go to jail? Come on.

A careless programmer making a bad choice should simply not be able to leak 200M personal details.

I am not sure that jail time is really the thing here, but there are institutional problems if this is something that happens.

Re: Inside the Largest US Voter Data Leak

#190

Post by lol214365 »

317070 wrote: post #5
rootsudo wrote: post #2

In other news, already known information. Every USA states has clear laws on releasing whose registered with which party, past affiliation and address. Clickbait.

From the article: > Along with home addresses, birthdates, and phone numbers, the records include advanced sentiment analyses used by political groups to predict where individual voters fall on hot-button issues such as gun ownership, stem cell research, and the right to abortion, as well as suspected religious affiliation and ethnicity. In some Western countries, the mere existence of such a database would be illega…

France sure is a model for the US to follow...
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