Slashdot Mirror
Voter Records Exposed
The
current edition
of Lauren Weinstein's PRIVACY Forum has a cautionary tale about online voter registration in one Texas county. It seems your username is your first and last name, and your password is your year of birth. Not many bits of security there. Guess that information and you can learn any Denton County voter's home address and some trivia -- but at least not their credit card numbers ... yet. michael : A silly privacy overreaction, IMHO. I believe voter records are public in every state and county in the U.S., and they are routinely used by police, journalists, political bulk mailers, etc. If the objection is that they're now "on the Web", that seems like a silly hair-splitting, since for a few dollars you can get the records for an entire county on CD-ROM anyway. Behind the scenes, the voter registration records of the entire country are used by the major political parties to coordinate mailings - this information is not and has never been private.
Yup. Voter records are public. I was registered Republican for a while, and because of that I get a constant stream of mail from Republican candidates -- along with some *vile* attacks on Gore and other Democrats from local and state Republican organizations.
Maybe the campaign is high-minded (hah!) at the national level, but here in the local trenches, at least in Maryland, it seems like Republicans are using voter lists as a way to irritate everyone they can in the most Gingrichlike way possible.
- Robin
The accessibility of voter records is *ancient* news.
Years ago I ran for School Board.
I purchased voter records including name, mailing address, and voting history for about 6,000 registered voters in the precincts that made up the local school district.
When I bought these, I had perhaps six different companies in metro Seattle to choose from.
I paid about $25.00 for five floppies-full, ASCII, comma-delimited.
If I'd wanted to pay more, I could have had the data set up for various software.
This is no big deal, except this is stupider because you have to know the name and birthdate to get one record.
One at a time.
What a pain in the ass.
Twenty-five bucks got me 6,000.
t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
In the UK, the electoral register is a public document which is compiled by the local authority every year around this time. (The final version is supposed to be published on November 1st).
Anyone can inspect the electoral register, and copies are available (for a fee) for any company wanting it, in machine readable form, so that they can, for instance, check you are not giving them dud details on a credit application. It contains your full name, house address, and also date of birth for persons between 16 and 18 years of age.
As your date of birth is one of the standard security questions asked by credit card companies when calling in to their telephone service lines, that strikes me as a security risk.
Each voter gets a number in the register, such as J 4572. This is printed on your poll card which you take to the polling station to cast your vote (you don't need it, they have printed copies of the register there, and can look up your voter number there).
Most people assume that elections are private matters between the voters and the ballot box. The totals are obviously public information, but can you tell how a particular person voted?
The answer in most cases is no, however the polling station staff write on their register the number of the ballot paper you are given, which means it is, in theory atleast, possible to trace who voted for which candidate.
At this time it isn't a crime to vote for any candidate, and anyone who has sufficient support and pays their election deposit can be a candidate, hence the number of crazy candidates from parties such as The Official Monster Raving Loony Party and other less than serious candidates.
Kind of makes you wish there was an official monster raving loony running for the US presidency eh? [They are both fully paid up members - Ed]
Slashdot overreacting to privacy considerations?
That would never happen.
Can you imagine what the political scene would be like if voter registration records weren't public?
Does Chicago under Daley the 1st familiar? How many thousands of voters would come from cemetaries?
At least this, you can look up every voter in a district. IF you start finding registered voters living in a vacant lot, you know you have some voter fraud.
Two days ago I realized that I could not find my voter registration card. I needed the precinct information to find out my polling place for the elections on Tuesday. No problem, just go online and do a few searches and voila! I found the Denton County Voter Registration Database. I put in my name and date of birth and quickly got my voter information. I then skipped over and looked up the precinct map and found my polling place. Total elapsed time 5 minutes. Result: happy voter.
This morning I was shocked to read the Slashdot post about Dr. Evil and his diabolical plan to destroy the privacy rights of Denton County residents! After all, I had innocently used that SAME site to find information that I needed to be a responsible citizen, and I didn't even realize how exposed I was! My privacy was shattered! How dare anyone make my home address and gender easily available to ANYONE who knows the year I was born (yet another reason to lie about your age!) Yesterday I felt safe and secure. Today I feel... vulnerable.
After all, someone might use this fiendish web site in combination with the Phone Book (another devilish anti-privacy device) to actually obtain my telephone number! The horror!
In all seriousness, yes I am concerned about my both my online and offline privacy. I fully intend to contact my county officials and talk to them about Denton County's privacy policies, and about the web site in particular. The site could be more secure without limiting legitimate use. As a test, I did a search on "John Smith, 1950" and got instant access to a couple of voters' registration information. Should I have the ability to get that information about someone else? Probably not. Is having that information harmful to them? Probably not.
The bottom line is that we are still in "untamed frontier" days of the information age. People (government people included) are not always aware of the full consequences of their public actions. Vigilence and Courtesy are our best weapons to protect our interests and to keep society healthy.
IV
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
In this state I can not only get a CD-ROM with the driver's license and vehicle registration for every licensed driver and vehicle in the state, I can get a subscription with quarterly updates!
Somebody cuts me off on the road, I get their license plate, look it up on my handy CD-ROM, and well, if I weren't such a nice guy, that person might start getting strange phone calls in the night, or have even worse things happen.
The only reason there isn't more of this kind of stuff happening is most people don't realize these things are public record, and so don't bother to go pick up a copy of the records!
Have we been so busy focusing on "Internet" privacy and controlling our information in corporate databases that we forgot about all the information in GOVERNMENT databases that's accessible to anyone just for the asking?
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How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
You know, this really pisses me off. In fact, I'm so enraged that I think I'll come over to your house and have a word with you in person. What county did you say you lived in again?