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Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

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Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#321

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The circumstances in which you actually need to physically present your Social Security card are quite rare indeed. In fact, that is the first thing I was told by the ssa dot gov site, when I applied to receive a new card. It is very unlikely that you will be asked, even by a prospective employer, for your actual card, because let's face it: it doesn't even have a photo, or anything but that unique number on it. Anyo…

> The circumstances in which you actually need to physically present your Social Security card are quite rare indeed. In my state, it's one of the allowed document types for proof of social security number, required to get a real ID drivers license. https://www.mass.gov/doc/ma-real-id-documents-checklist/down...

To get one, but not to renew it, so that's still pretty rare.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason capitalism cannot work well is that it assumes endless resources and infinite growth, not because people don't like electronic transfers. Capitalism is failing in all countries and those that are not are already transitioning to some form or another or post consumerism.

Sure at the "end game" stage you are correct. But on the way to that stage it does what it does really well, meaning it makes lots more capital. De Soto is talking about why it "cannot" get started in a place without government controlled land registry.

Sorry to break it to you but we are past end game since possibly the dot-com bubble.

"Cannot work well" and "cannot get started" are two different things. The whole of Latin America apart from Cuba is capitalist, for better or worse, regardless of how bad those countries keep their books.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying that this is the only reason, but it is a big reason why we have a land survey of our property on hand on paper and stored online. If something ever happened to the registry, we could at least establish our claim to our land.

Don't you have a land title, which of course is more evidence than a survey which anyone can pay for and get?

Surveys, at least here and I assume everywhere, also contain parcel numbers, the neighbor's parcel numbers, and the legal owner of each parcel's name right on the survey. Along with the date of the survey. I live in a pretty rural area where 20 acres is a small lot, so having proof of where the property lines are tends to be just as important as the title.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#324

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Fun fact, if you're unlucky enough to replace your Social Security card 10 times, they will no longer issue them to you anymore. It is a lifetime limit, and they fan it out to 3 per year. Oddly enough, if you legally change your name, they will send you a new one regardless of the limit.

The circumstances in which you actually need to physically present your Social Security card are quite rare indeed. In fact, that is the first thing I was told by the ssa dot gov site, when I applied to receive a new card. It is very unlikely that you will be asked, even by a prospective employer, for your actual card, because let's face it: it doesn't even have a photo, or anything but that unique number on it. Anyo…

> SSNs are not a "national ID"

That's not what they are, but that's what they've defacto become. I hate it.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#325

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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 balance is at a bank. If the bank is gone your balance at it doesn't matter.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also physical markers in the ground at the corners of most properties. So if you had to, you could send a surveyor out to recertify boundaries. That would get very expensive quickly, however.

This is not true anywhere I've lived, and I'm curious where it is true.

Generally, those markers are placed by the person who did the previous survey. They’re not really official designations of anything. However, if you look around, you will find things called survey monuments. Sometimes they’re embedded in the sidewalk, or the middle of the road. Out in the boonies sometimes there’s a little concrete pedestal that has the marker on it. Anytime you look at a recorded deed you will see a legal description of the land and generally that description will start from one of those monuments.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you have a land title, which of course is more evidence than a survey which anyone can pay for and get?

The title proves ownership (kinda), but does not define the outline of the property itself. If the you need to know if the fence is on your property or the neighbor’s, a title or deed won’t help you find that line. So if the official survey is lost and you need to know where the land you own is, you will need a survey.

Recorded deed will more or less universally contain a legal description of the land. This does, in fact, defined the illegal outline of the parcel.

A survey is little more than marching out into the field and putting at the location where you believe the boundaries to be based on your review of the legal description.

Of course that’s not the end of the discussion as to boundaries for reasons like adverse possession or busted titles but on his own a surveyor is going to tell you basically nothing.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know exactly on it works in Romania, but proving you purchased a patch of land is a different question -- for that you have the deed. You then submit the deed to the land registry. So this situation could at most result in the seller being able to sell the land more than once or disputes over the priority of sales over liens and other competing acts subject to registration.

Here in Brazil lots of people deal land by word of mouth. The country is just too big and there isn't enough state present to make every transaction official, so people shake on it, draft an unofficial document and actually living and developing the land over a long period of time is what consistitutes ownership.

That’s how it works in the US too. We don’t record documents with the county recorder to make them official, we do so to provide notice to third parties who might purchase the land.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#329
post #107

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The sad part is, the whole world worked perfectly fine without anything online, ever, prior to 20 years ago. Even 10 years ago for slow-moving change. It's literally not a requirement to have it all online. And the cost of developers, plus coding + security updates + platform costs, really just means you replace a few assistants which would process requests by hand, with all that. Except? It's a lot harder to hack a…

I agree that digitalization is not a panacea, but things did not work anywhere close to perfectly fine when everything was on paper. There are just as many ways for analog/physical processes to go wrong. A sophisticated genius hacker in a different country can’t touch your paper records, but an absolute moron with a bic lighter can destroy records just as effectively. Hell, an irresponsible clerk can do an incredible…

Yeah, while online copies are a risk, you can make offline digital copies of important data for a thousandth the price of paper copies.

Put some desktop-size tape robots in several government building closets, and task someone with switching tapes weekly, and you can achieve more reliability than multiple huge paper archives.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#330
post #211
post #119

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There are many examples of important paper records (property, birth/death, etc) being lost in fires or floods, so it's not the case that "everything worked perfectly fine" in those days either.

All those examples are not different from not having backups of digital data too. Making copies when you microfiche, having duplicate stores, it's all exceptionally easy and a solved problem. And of course everything didn't work perfectly, it did however work "perfectly fine", which means "very well" or "good enough". Meanwhile, adding in network connectivity to anything vital these days is just insanely dumb. No sof…

Your overall assessment of advantages and disadvantages seems like you're comparing paper with backups to software without backups, though. No competent system can have all the records destroyed remotely. And we know how to backup digital systems even better than we know how to backup paper ones.

And as a third option we can have efficient digital systems that aren't plugged into the Internet. (Presumably the Internet could have a copy that's regularly updated.)

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